Film Music in ‘Minor’ National Cinemas 9781501304569, 9781628926675, 9781628929836

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Acknowledgements This book is dedicated to the memory of Rebecca Coyle. The editors and Bloomsbury Academic thank the Screen Sound Journal (screensoundjournal.org) for their kind permission to reprint ‘Subtle Idiosyncracy: Sound and Music in the Australian Animated Short Film The Lost Thing (2010)’, originally written for Screen Sound n4, 2013, which appears here as Chapter 9.

Contributors

Charles O. Aluede, Associate Professor of Music Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria He is an erstwhile Head of the Department of Theatre and Media Arts and Sub-Dean, Faculty of Arts at Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, Edo State, Nigeria. He is an Ethnomusicologist, Performer and African Studies Scholar. He has completed significant researches and authored two books. He has published a good number of essays in over half of the world’s continents. He has peerreviewed works for high ranking international journals and has edited EJOTMAS. Dr. Aluede is the national secretary of the Association of Nigerian Musicologists (ANIM), and also a member of the International Trombone Association (ITA), International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) and Teachers without Borders International (TWBI). He is happily married with beautiful children. Nicholas Balaisis, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Concordia University, Montréal He teaches courses in media history, new media and critical theory. His primary area of research is on Cuban film and media history since the Cuban Revolution, and he has published articles on Cuban and world cinema in Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Cineaction and Public. Most recently, he has completed an essay on the international film school near Havana (EICTV) for a book on international film education: The Education of the Filmmaker: Views from around the World (Palgrave Press, 2013). He is co-contributor to the Visible City Project + Archive and a former Board member of the Regent Park Film Festival, a multi-cultural film festival in Toronto located in Canada’s oldest public housing community. Rebecca Coyle, founding editor of Screen Sound: The Australasian Journal of Soundtrack Studies and former Associate Professor Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia. Her edited anthologies Screen Scores (1995) and Reel Tracks (2005) pioneered Australian screen soundtrack studies.

Contributors

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Jon Fitzgerald, composer and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the contemporary music program Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia He has written widely on various aspects of popular music and screen soundtracks. Armida de la Garza, Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities and Screen Media University College Cork, Ireland She is a Member of the Lingnan Centre for Film Studies Advisory Board and co-editor of the journal Transnational Cinemas (Bristol: Intellect). She is interested in research on screen media and their relation to culture, industry and education. She has published on a variety of topics, ranging from the links between documentary and diaspora, to Realism in Latin American cinema. Germán Gil-Curiel, Research Affiliate in the Department of Music University College Cork, Ireland His main research and teaching interest is the relationship between music, film and literature, in particular leitmotifs such as melancholy and death. Germán is an accomplished classical guitarist, having performed at the Dolores Olmedo Museum and the Orfeó Català de Mèxic in Mexico City. He is the author of ‘Music, Literature and Cinema: A Comparative Approach to the Aesthetics of Death, in Tous les matins du monde’ (2009); ‘The Cinematic Texts of Edgar Allan Poe: from the Written Word to Digital Art’ (2012); and ‘From Page to Screen: The Supernatural in Literature and on Film: “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce and La Rivière du Hibou by Robert Enrico’ (2013). Other publications are: ‘A Comparative Approach: the Early European Supernatural Tale. Five Variations of a Theme’ (2011); ‘Dancing Tragedy: Alexander McQueen’s Aesthetics of Spectacle’ (2013); and ‘Walls and Mirrors: Identity in Art’ (2015). He is also a certified literary translator. Philip Hayward, Adjunct Professor Southern Cross University and at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia He is also a member of the audiovisual ensemble The Moviolas. He has written widely on Science Fiction and Horror cinema soundtracks.

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Hans Michael Anselmo Hess, composer, guitarist and Music Researcher Rio Grande do Sul, Southern Brazil Dr Hess studied his postgraduate degrees at the University of Bristol where he earned a master’s degree in music composition for film and television, and a doctorate in Film Musicology for the study of uses of samba in Brazilian Films. Currently, he resides in Bristol working as a Senior Associate Teacher at the University of Bristol, a Freelance Music Leader for Bristol Plays Music and a composer for his own audio production company Double H Music. Please visit: www.hanshessmusic.com; www.hanshessguitar.net Henry Johnson, Professor in the Department of Music University of Otago, New Zealand His teaching and research interests are in the field of ethnomusicology, particularly the creative and performing arts of Asia and its diasporas. His recent books include The Koto (Hotei, 2004), Asia in the Making of New Zealand (Auckland UP, 2006; co-edited with Brian Moloughney), Performing Japan (Global Oriental, 2008; co-edited with Jerry Jaffe), and The Shamisen (Brill, 2010). His article on Japanese animation, music education and cultural nationalism was published in Animation Journal (2009), and two of his interviews on documentary film music have appeared in Screen Sound (2010, 2012). Chikako Nagayama Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Japan Studies Akita International University, Japan She is the author of ‘The Flux of Domesticity and the Exotic in a Wartime Melodrama’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 34 (2): 369–95, ‘Race as Technology and Blurred National Boundaries in Japanese Imperialism: Nessa no chikai (Vow in the Desert) (1940), Transnational Cinemas 3 (2): 211–30 and the forthcoming chapter, ‘Show Your Face: Racialization of War Crimes in the NFB’s The Mask of Nippon’ (1942), in Steven Kohm, Sonia Bookman and Pauline Greenhill, eds, Canadian Crime Films and Society, Black Point, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing. Her recent teaching engagements include sociology, cultural studies, communication studies and feminist theory.

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Osakue Stevenson Omoera, Lecturer Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, Nigeria He teaches media and film studies, theatre studies and African performance and the dynamics of culture. He completed a Ph.D. work in Media Arts Studies at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Having pioneered scholarly inquiry into the Benin video-film segment of Nollywood studies, Osakue continues to probe the culture and practice of Nigerian video cinema. He aspires to be a leading Professor of Media Arts, Communication and Cultural Studies whose work vertically and horizontally contributes to scholarship and ultimately the improvement of the human condition. Apart from publishing widely in leading journals and specialist books across the globe, this eclectic scholar does community service with orphanages under the aegis of the Osakue Omoera Foundation (OOF) in various communities in Edo State of Nigeria. He is blissfully married, with lovely children. Carolin Overhoff Ferreira, Assistant Professor of Contemporary Cinema Federal University of São Paulo, campus Guarulhos She is the author of Neue Tendenzen in der Dramaturgie Lateinamerikas (Vistas, 1999), Identity and Difference – Postcoloniality and Transnationality in Lusophone Films (LIT, 2012) and O cinema português: aproximações a sua história e indisciplinaridade (2013), as well as the editor of O Cinema Português através dos Seus Filmes (Campo das Letras, 2007; Edições 70, 2014), Africa – um Continente no Cinema (Unifesp, 2014) and Manoel de Oliveira – Novas Perspectivas sobre a Sua Obra (Unifesp, 2013), Dekalog – On Manoel de Oliveira (Wallflower Press, 2008). Her articles have been published in Adaptation, Camera Obscura, Journal of African Cinemas, Latin American Theatre Review, Modern Drama, Music and the Moving Image, Studies in European Cinema, Transnational Cinemas, Tempo Brasileiro and Third Text, among others. Dr Jooyeon Rhee, Lecturer The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel She teaches Korean history, literature and visual culture. She is currently working on her monograph on the gendered representation of modernity in Korean literature produced in early colonial Korea. She has published articles and book chapters on Korean and Japanese literature and film; and translated Korean and Japanese literature into English.

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Rowena Santos Aquino, Lecturer in the Department of Film and Electronic Arts California State University, Long Beach, USA She has published in several journals, including Asian Cinema and Transnational Cinemas. She is also the Senior Film Critic at the film website Next Projection. Her research interests include documentary film theory/history, docufiction forms, transnational and multilingual productions, and Asian cinemas. Jonathan Stock, Professor of Music and Head of the School of Music and Theatre University College Cork, Ireland Having previously worked at the University of Sydney (Associate Dean for Research, Sydney Conservatorium of Music) and the University of Sheffield. An ethnomusicologist specializing in the music of East Asia, China and Taiwan, he is also interested in applied research, English folk music, music education, musical analysis, research ethics, and the global history and theory of ethnomusicology.

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Introduction: Modalities of Music in ‘Minor Cinema’ Jonathan P. J. Stock

University College Cork, Ireland

The essays in this volume trace the outcomes of moments where those involved in making film in various world locales reflect upon their home societies’ expressive and aspirational needs, putting them into perspective against wider international norms, trends and possibilities in the practice of film music. Their responses run all the way from self-aware reaction against what might be called mainstream film and its musical conventions (as in the newsreel example with which Balaisis begins his account of Cuban revolutionary film) through to approaches intended to be more accommodating and assimilative (among them, the Chinese instance analysed by Gil-Curiel, which he describes as at once both nationalist and cosmopolitan). As this already implies, music in global cinema isn’t a uniform corpus. Nor does it always work within the bounds of a single set of operating procedures. Even when a key aim of those involved is projecting a representation of collectively conceived national values, film music very typically stems from what can be quite special and individual selections on the part of individual composers, performers and directors, a striking number of whom lead diasporic or at least multi-sited lives. And in many instances, the music of film is also tasked with summoning up particularities of class, gender, regional and historical setting (among other variables), not just the nation more generically. The resulting music is therefore expressively multivalent, it turns place into space, it tunes action and reaction, and it fuses the ethical and the aesthetic, which means that its reception inevitably becomes a personal affair, with each viewer required to form their own sense of a shared set of visual, sonic and contextual cues.

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The concept of ‘minor cinema’, which springs from philosophical work by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, is a rallying point for the book as a whole. Minor cinema, in its initial conception, was located firmly in the postcolonial moment, and it involved the imaginative remaking of national spaces through emancipatory usages of the language of ‘major cinema’. De La Garza notes (this volume) a telling emphasis: ‘Gilles Deleuze’s definition of the “minor in cinema” … does not represent or address a people as oppressed and subjected, but anticipates instead “a people to be created, a consciousness to be brought into existence”. ’ Making cinema, then, was part of the project of (re)making the nation. It was an act of advocacy, rather than simply an exercise of description. Over its lifetime, this concept has been redeveloped by a number of writers, including several in this volume. And of course the world’s political makeup has shifted radically with postcolonial nation-building per se now a receding priority in some areas. Capturing this new reality, and eschewing explicit reference to the political, Johnson (this volume) summarizes minor cinema as: ‘a small-scale, low budget type of film production that on the one hand aims for excellence in the national market …, while at the same time is not produced solely with the intention of reaching a mass audience internationally’. That said, it is striking how many of the films analysed in this volume remain open to, or are even specifically aimed at large-scale, international consumption. One might conclude that if its range of political standpoints has diversified, ‘minor cinema’ remains as always-already concerned with the workings of power in intercultural settings as it was for Deleuze and Guattari (and, of course, for an earlier generation of directors such as Marcel Camus, whose 1959 work Orfeu Negro [Black Orpheus] is featured in Hans Hess’s chapter on Brazil). In place of an emphasis on nation-building alone, I read in these chapters more complex cinematic acts that involve illuminating minority identities versus the boundary-making of the larger nation state, and those that explore the various tendrils of international capitalism as they encircle individuals and the nation alike, such that the music’s evoking of personhood, place and time may come to mark out an appeal to exotic otherness rather than to self-determination. It is tempting to explore for a moment the suggestive potential of a musical understanding of the term ‘minor’. In tonal theory, the terms minor and major refer not to age, power or population differentials but to contrasting sets of notes from which a musical piece is composed. A composition using the minor scale is not necessarily any smaller in sonic range or other musical components



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(instrumentation, timbre, genre, etc.) than one using the major scale. Nor is it any less expressive. Indeed, on a technical level, the minor is potentially the more interesting of the two insofar as its note set has distinct ascending and descending patterns: while C Major comprises the note set of C, D, E, F, G, A and B whether upward or downward, C Minor can be played C, D, E flat, F, G, A and B on the way up and C, B flat, A flat, G, F, E flat and D on the way down. The major scale has seven available pitches, the minor rewards its listener with a richer set of nine. Of course, larger musical compositions can progress through multiple keys, typically both major and minor (and older and newer music uses yet other note sets as its building blocks) such that a composer isn’t faced with an either/or choice so much as which first, and where next. This notion of a widely shared system within which a composer or music compiler chooses between (and typically alternates) contrasting expressive modalities may be useful as a metaphor when thinking of the situation of music in global film more widely. It reminds us that films from the locations touched on in this book may emerge from industrial systems and expressive cultures no smaller than those closely associated with Hollywood. Even more, it prompts us to attend to the agency underpinning musical work in cinema. That is, we can analyse how and why those responsible for the music in film select what they do from the wide set of resources that includes style traits historically and contemporaneously associated with Hollywood norms and that, in much of the world, additionally includes the sonic traces of local, regional, national or minority music cultures. In the context of this book, we often read of producers turning to traditional music not only to provide geographical groundedness but for its massively resonant potential when placed in intersection with such issues as cultural politics, nationalism, migration or nostalgia. Santos-Aquino in this volume, for instance, offers a striking case in point in her discussion of films of Bahman Ghobadi that deploy Kurdish traditional (and popular) music to give expressive voice to a people marginalized in contemporary Iran. Finally, this notion that the individuals involved in film making choose between contrasting musical modalities agency has the virtue of not applying any one political outcome to a single set of style-related choices. Nagayama’s chapter illustrates this idea well, through its exploration of the complex politics of a genre of ‘China melody’ produced at the height of Japan’s building of an empire on mainland East Asia in the 1930s and 1940s. And, in pointing to the specific listenership of Japanese soldiers deployed overseas throughout this period, her chapter also reminds us to keep the particularities of audience in view when

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discussing the meaning of film and film music and when dissecting the apparent intentions of those who created the films themselves. If ‘minor’ cinema is locally produced while also globally conscious, then this new collection mirrors that in its own design, drawing together the perspectives of a team of expert scholars on a body of film that in itself represents a rich set of international subjectivities. These chapters make a claim for the significance and interest of the music of cinema from around the world, which they understand to employ expressive modalities that overlap but are not entirely congruent with those of the global mainstream. Most of all, they argue that attending closely to the distinctive musical evocations of world film offers us a key tool in understanding the interplay of cinema and society worldwide.

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Aural Dialectics and Revolutionary Media in Cuba Nicholas Balaisis

University of Waterloo, Canada

In the first year of the group we developed a revolutionary system for studying the theory and practice of music by combining all possible styles: from Beethoven to John Coltrane, Gilberto Gil to Ravi Shankar, Anton von Webern to Xenakis, Frank Zappa to Blood, Sweat and Tears, Sindo Garay to Juan Blanco, and of course, from Bach to the Beatles. Grupo Experimental Sonora ICAIC (Instituto Cubano del Arte y la Industria Cinematográficos)

Musical dialectics and radical cinema In an early post-revolutionary Cuban newsreel in 1960 (#49), we witness the collective enthusiasm displayed as a result of the creation of a national film institute. The short newsreel graphically depicts the radical changes in film production following the Cuban revolution, where US film companies were deposed from the island, and the Cuban government nationalized film production through the creation of the ICAIC. One of the notable aspects of the short film is the dynamic use of music that underscores the dramatic images and voiceover. The one-minute newsreel opens with the screeching face of the Warner Brothers’ iconic lion over which a voiceover summarizes the history of US film companies in Cuba from the point of view of the revolution: ‘For many years, North American films poisoned Cuban screens, advocating imperialism and preaching violence and crime.’ Underscoring these opening images is the

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American pop hit, ‘Rock Around the Clock’, recorded by Bill Haley and the Comets in 1954.1 The upbeat rockabilly notes of the American hit song form a striking contrast with the severe voiceover noting the ‘poisonous’ effects of American culture on Cuban movie screens. The American rock song then gives way to a triumphant orchestral score that seems to better suit the celebratory images onscreen: ICAIC president Alfredo Guevara denouncing ‘yankee’ film distribution on the island. The voiceover concludes that, because of the Cuban revolution, it is now possible for Cubans to see ‘revolutionary’ films from all over the world. The final image of the reel shows a worker on the roof of the building of the now-exiled Warner Brothers in Havana, knocking out the iconic company name with a sledgehammer. The dynamic use of music in this early Cuban newsreel evidences a key feature of film music in Cuban national cinema following the revolution in 1959, namely, a dialectical relationship to political ideology. The newsreel evinces a very clear ideological programme: it denounces US imperialism as expressed through Hollywood cinema, and celebrates the role and work of the newly formed Cuban government in creating policies and institutions that support an autonomous national film culture. The use of an American pop rock hit to underscore this message is a peculiar choice given this overt political message. On one hand, the choice of a popular American hit song seems an odd choice given the fact that the film’s message explicitly denounces the poisonous effects of American culture in Cuba. Indeed, ‘Rock Around the Clock’, which stood for eight weeks on top of the Billboard music charts in 1955, conjures strong images of Americana – soda fountains, rockabilly, greasers – and stands in sharp contrast to the image of Cuban workers laying waste to another icon of American culture, Warner Brothers. On the other hand, the rock song is intriguing and effective, as the film seems to re-appropriate a popular American rock hit and use its dynamism and energy to emphasize Cuban cultural autonomy, an autonomy that came very much at the expense of American cultural and economic interests. The use of the rock song punctuates a dialectical effect in the film, a formal effect that is more expansively articulated in Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s famous essay, ‘The Viewer’s Dialectic’. In the essay, Alea decries Hollywood cinema as serving as an ideological refuge for viewers, lulling them into a ‘daydream’ by encouraging viewers’ ‘false illusions’ (Alea, 1997: 112). In his proposition for renewed national cinema, Alea argues that cinema should be a dialectical stimulus for critical viewer awareness, a stimulus that will propel the viewer into greater political consciousness:



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We understand what cinema’s social function should be in Cuba in these times: it should contribute in the most effective way possible to elevating viewers’ revolutionary consciousness and to arming them for the ideological struggle which they have to wage against all kinds of reactionary tendencies and it should also contribute to their enjoyment of life (Alea, 1997: 110).

While the newsreel advances a relatively straight political message (and thus could be read as an arm of state propaganda), the use of music in the sequence complicates the delivery of the ideological message. In other words, the music brings about a kind of dialectic that does not allow the image to be absorbed passively by the viewer but works to elevate viewer consciousness through critical contrast. By re-appropriating a hit American rock song for use in a newsreel denouncing American culture, the short newsreel re-codes the meaning of the song, putting it to use in the service of a new context: the building of revolutionary Cuba. By using such a recognizable piece of American culture in a new context, the film invites the viewer into a critical dialogue with Cuban and American culture: employing its aesthetic force in a renewed context. This essay discusses one particular aspect of film music in the context of Cuban national cinema: its relationship to political ideology. I argue that music occupies a complex ideological space within the post-revolutionary cinematic tradition in Cuba. On one hand, music was used in deliberately experimental and self-conscious ways to challenge what in Cuba were seen as the inherent ideological biases within Hollywood and Latin American film, and to produce new revolutionary national subjects. On the other hand, I argue that music has also been used as a site for registering ideological critique of the revolutionary project in Cuba, serving as a proxy for Cuban voices that do not have access to a free press or other forms of the public sphere (Balaisis, 2010). This argument is informed by Gilles Deleuze’s notion of minor cinema within the context of emerging postcolonial national cinemas. In Cinema 2: The Time Image, Deleuze argues that what he calls ‘minor’ cinema is largely concerned not with representation but experimentation and the creative act of becoming: ‘the prefiguration of the people who are missing’ (2003: 224). For Deleuze, postcolonial cinemas of the 1960s in particular, wrestle with the fundamental absence of their collective self-representation onscreen. The experimental energies witnessed in many of these films, therefore, reflect an attempt to ‘invent’ the nation and people in the postcolonial context:

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Film Music in ‘Minor’ National Cinemas Art, and especially cinematographic art, must take part in this task: not that of addressing a people, which is presupposed already there, but of contributing to the invention of a people. The moment the master, or colonizer, proclaims ‘There have never been people here,’ the missing people are a becoming, they invent themselves, in shanty towns and in camps, or in ghettos, in new conditions of struggle to which a necessarily political art must contribute. (Deleuze, 2002: 217)

Post-revolutionary Cuban cinema embodies this energy of invention described by Deleuze, as is evident in the creative use of music within many Cuban films. Indeed, the dialectical and often contradictory, messy, or experimental use of music in Cuban films reflects this character of invention: the active search for new political and national subjectivities energized by the success of the Cuban revolution. The scope of this essay does not permit an exhaustive account of postrevolutionary Cuban cinema. I have thus chosen to focus on a selection of films from leading Cuban filmmakers who have been active in articulating, interrogating, or critiquing the ideology of Cuban revolutionary nationalism. I have also chosen films that employ music in deliberate and dialectical ways. My essay concentrates on film examples in two primary periods: the immediate decade following the Cuban revolution, and the post-Soviet period beginning in the 1990s known as the Special Period. My rationale for this comparison is that these are both periods when there are significant changes taking part in Cuba, politically, culturally, and ideologically. The 1960s can be seen as a revaluation of all ideological values heretofore present in Cuba before 1959, and many of the films exhibit experimental and radical uses of music to challenge older, inherited ideological precepts. The period following the collapse of the Soviet Union, on the other hand, is characterized by dramatic challenges to the political status quo and can be said to constitute an ideological crisis. Many films in this period register ambivalence to the political status quo through the use of music.

Film music: ideology and invisibility Film, it has frequently been argued, is largely seen as a visual medium and as a result, the acoustic component of cinema, though important, has been greatly overlooked by film scholars and critics. As Claudia Gorbman argues, film



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studies has tended to focus on the narrative and visual aesthetics of cinema and has thus treated music as subordinate to these other research areas (Buhler, Flynn and Neumeyer, 2000: 1). One of the reasons for the lack of attention to film music is that it is often seen as a supplement to narrative and image, and is thus beyond the purview of the film critic. The primary claim about music in Hollywood cinema, for example, is that it aims ‘to achieve seamless unity and cohesion – a passive accord vis-à-vis other cinematic elements’ (Buhler, Flynn and Neumeyer, 2000: 3). This use of music, as a supplement to the visual image, reinforces its deficient status in the film form overall. Mary Anne Doane argues that the use of music in melodrama in particular, works in a supplementary manner, adding emotion to the moving image. By doing so, it marks a deficiency in the axis of vision. For Doane, the specific work of music in melodrama – to supply emotion – reinforces its secondary role in the motion picture: ‘it is as though music continually announces its own deficiency in relation to meaning’ (Buhler, Flynn and Neumeyer, 2000: 12). It is important to add here that this lack of attention to music is amplified in the case of cinema beyond Hollywood and European film. In English accounts of world cinema, there is little attention given to the role of music in these films, while studies that focus on music tend to be written by musicologists or ‘Area Studies’ scholars who rarely analyse music in relation to the moving image. Another difficulty in the study of film music stems from its status as a sound medium. In his book on oral cultures, media theorist Walter Ong describes the difficulty of studying sound-based forms of communication because of their immateriality. Unlike a still image, a printed page, or even a film sequence, sounds cannot be isolated as easily for intellectual scrutiny. Sound only exists when it is going out of existence. It is not simply perishable but essentially evanescent, and it is sensed as evanescent. […] There is no way to stop sound and have sound. I can stop a motion picture camera and hold one frame fixed on the screen. If I stop the movement of sound, I have nothing—only silence, no sound at all. All sensation takes place in time, but no other sensory field totally resists a holding action, stabilization quite in this way. (Ong, 2002: 32)

While a motion picture frame can be paused in order to examine particular elements of mise-en-scène or lighting, music cannot be isolated or it loses its holistic meaning: it becomes a single note or tone and thus ceases to be music qua music. For film and media scholars, trained primarily in the areas of visual

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analysis and close reading, film music presents something of a methodological challenge: how do you perform a close reading of sound? Lamenting the psychosocial effects of visual media, Marshall McLuhan argues: ‘the eye has none of the delicacy of the ear’ (1995: 122). For McLuhan, like for Ong, sonic media are much more difficult to apprehend and as a result, require much more cognitive work and oral ‘delicacy’ than the work needed to ‘read’ a text or image. The limited visibility of music in the cinema context lends it particular force. Because music elicits a strong effect on the reading or framing of the film images, and because it does so in a manner that is seemingly surreptitious, film music can be strongly linked to ideology. As Carol Flynn argues, film music’s current ideological function within Hollywood cinema is ‘to generate the illusion that it has none’ (Buhler, Flynn and Neumeyer, 2000: 14). In melodrama, for example, the use of music to underscore or punctuate a dramatic sequence often invites the viewer to ‘lose themselves’ in the emotional lives of the characters. In this way, viewers may fail to grasp the film experience as an intentional formal system that is rooted, for many Marxist critics, in conservative capitalist ideology. For example, from a position highly resonant with that of the Cuban critics, Theodor Adorno famously critiques the ‘pre-digested’ quality of mass culture that facilitates the absorption of dominant ideology celebrating the achievements and failures of the lone individual in lieu of narratives that draw attention to the systemic effects of institutions and broad social forces (Adorno, 2004: 66). Mass culture ‘is baby food: permanent self-reflection based upon the infantile compulsion of needs which it creates in the first place’ (67). Following Adorno, we can see how sound and music – from well-timed laugh tracks to emotion-laded musical scores – constitute integral elements within the ‘schema’ of mass culture. These elements aid in the ‘digestion’ of the film or cultural form and thus weaken the audience’s capacity for critical engagement with the particular media. It is this invisible and insidious aspect of Hollywood film in particular that was the principal object of criticism and reform for many Cuban filmmakers. In an article published in the Cuban film journal Cine Cubano, Santiago Álvarez argues that Hollywood’s penetration across the globe should be understood primarily in terms of a cultural colonization of the mind. For Álvarez, Hollywood was a form of ‘cultural penetration’ in the way that it ‘molds the minds and standardizes the tastes of millions of consumers’ in both capitalist and colonial countries (1968: 7). This is a common theme in Cuban film writing in the 1960s and 1970s, where a number of film critics and filmmakers were



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working to create cinema outside the framework of Hollywood cinema. In the first congress on film and education in 1971, Manuel Perez and Julio García Espinosa detail in great length the work that Cubans have to do in order to undo the effects of US cinema since Cubans developed their visual ‘literacy’ via Hollywood and its imitators: ‘Fuimos alfabetizados cinematographicamente por el cine norteamericano y sus imitadores de otras latitudes’ (Perez and Espinosa, 1972: 6). For Perez and Espinosa, Hollywood cinema represents more than just the ‘capital of yanqui cinema’ but is a ‘mode of conceiving the social function of cinema’ and ‘above all, an ideological conception’ of cinema (Perez and Espinosa 1972: 6). Music was a specific concern for Cuban filmmakers and critics preoccupied with ideology in Hollywood cinema. For a number of Cuban critics, film melodrama was a problematic form of ideological inscription of Latin American audiences. Enrique Colina and Daniel Torres argue that melodrama abounds with ‘praise, sighs and plaintive yearnings, typical of the lachrymose prose and poetry of Maria and Amado Nervo, of the pamphlet serials of women’s publications’ (Colina and Torres, 1978: 52). Colina and Torres link ideological and colonial passivity to what is stereotypically understood as a women’s genre, appealing to the emotions instead of reasoned and critical intellect. For them, melodrama’s sentimentality marks a flight from material reality into that of ‘passive’ emotional life. This cinema, with its melodramatic insistence, settles into the aftermath of a sentimental and sublimating art in which the problems of the individual, rather than those of the environment predominate, and where the class situation of the characters takes second place […] It is an art that adopts a passive, contemplative and Philistine attitude, opposing the fact of social inequality to the myth of the neutral equality of all human beings in matters of the heart. (Colina and Torres, 1978: 52)

Like Adorno’s critique of mass culture, Colina and Torres link melodrama’s sentimentalism with the ideological myths of individualism within a capitalist society, and eschew a materialist critique of social relations. Music was a central device in the struggle against inherited cinematic modes in Cuba following the Cuban revolution. Michael Chanan argues that one of the earliest post-revolutionary films used music specifically as a means of ‘exorcizing’ the ghosts of US and Latin American melodrama. In the 1960 film, Cuba Baila (Espinosa), Chanan argues that the director employed music

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in an innovative way, opposite to the uses put to music in typical melodrama. The film uses music not as a form of evasion, but as a form of self-conscious class analysis. It is an attempt to ‘exorcize the Latin American melodrama, not by seeking radical alternatives, but by taking its conventions and turning them around’ (Chanan, 2004: 150). In the film, music is aligned with popular culture and thus removed from associations with bourgeois culture. Moreover, music is not used strictly to supplement the narrative but as an expression of the living culture in Cuba. In the first frames of the film, we see a large group of people dancing to a band playing the distinct strains of Cuban son, a syncretic musical form native to Cuba. Son can be traced to the late nineteenth century in eastern Cuban cities such as Guantánamo, and is a blend of Spanish and African (Bantú) musical styles. For many musicologists, it is the most syncretic sound component of Cuban national and cultural identity (Orovio, 2004: 203). The lengthy opening sequence that showcases Cuban traditional music is celebratory and expresses the collective joy of national self-determination and cultural identity following the success of the Cuban revolution. In other words, the sequence seems to document a large and joyous party, where music and dancing embody the national mood. In this sequence, music is not employed in order to shape the mood of the narrative but is displayed as a central element in itself. Many sequences in the film foreground music and present it as an authentic and spontaneous expression of Cuban culture, organically emergent from the rhythms and energies of everyday life. This is music that is not meant to be read invisibly as a backdrop to character action, but is an authentic expression of the national ‘voice’, spilling out of the clubs and dancehalls and animating the public spaces of Cuban towns and villages. The prominent use and expression of music in the film thus serves as a sign of renewed cultural autonomy and confidence engendered by the Cuban revolution.

Leo Brouwer, Santiago Álvarez, and the Grupo de Experimentación Sonora de ICAIC Another prominent example of the radicalization of film music in post-revolutionary Cuba was the emergence of the Grupo de Experimentación Sonora de ICAIC (GESI). The idea for the group was inspired by similar experimental musical efforts in Brazil in the 1960s that included musicians such as Gilberto Gil. Like the Brazilians, the Cuban group aimed to ‘renovate’ and revolutionize



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the sounds of Cuban music, particularly in the context of film. The group emerged out of the spirit of the revolution in 1969 and the experimental and radical ethos, for creating music for Cuban films. They were led by Cuban film composer Leo Brouwer, who was responsible for a majority of Cuban film scores at ICAIC in the 1960s and worked in both fiction and non-fictional modes. Brouwer was a classical guitarist and a self-taught composer who wrote music for eighty-three films between 1960 and 1992 (Leo Brouwer Mezquida n.d.: online). While Brouwer composed classical pieces, having received formal training at the Julliard School of Music in New York, he was also influenced by Cuba’s folk musical heritage as well as by contemporary popular music of the era. One of Brouwer’s principal critiques of music was its rigid division into different genres and classifications, particularly the division between art and the ‘popular’. In a 1970 essay, ‘La música, lo cubano y la inovación’, Brouwer writes: The first thought that comes to mind when we speak of music is its classification or division into types. This classification – which I dislike – is engendered more by the specialization of the consumer fields than the product itself, and has remained subdivided into […] popular and art music […] The great contradictions that result from this nomenclature make us try to explain […] the etymological ‘truths’ of Popular and of Art. By Art is understood that music which is elaborated by a sense of complex structure and of sonoral traditions with various historical roots linked to a concert tradition. Popular music, which does not establish a commitment to the eternal, is founded in simple elements of easy recognition, so as not to disturb the intellectual capacity. (Century, 1987: 163)

This collision of musical genres is evident in a number of films produced by ICAIC in the 1960s, and can be seen as a musical equivalent of Alea’s visual dialectics. The use of many different styles and genres of music in Cuban film, as well as the often truncated and elliptical employment of musical fragments makes for an audible and intentional presence in Cuban film. As I mentioned at the outset of the essay, the use of American pop songs in a newsreel about the expulsion of American cultural forms in Cuba brings music to the foreground as an active element in the film’s narration; it is not just background but an active voice contributing to the ideological critique within the film. Brouwer’s impact on Cuban revolutionary cinema is substantive, essentially scoring the soundtrack of the Cuban revolution in fiction and non-fictional film. Among the eighty-three films for which he composed music in Cuba are many of the

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most prominent feature films and documentaries produced by ICAIC from the early 1960s to the early post-soviet period. Major films include El Joven rebelde (dir: Espinosa, 1961), La muerte de un burócrata (dir: Alea, 1966), Memorias del subdesarollo (dir: Alea, 1968), Lucía (dir: Solás, 1968), El Otro Francisco (dir: Giral, 1974), La última cena (dir: Alea, 1976) and Cecilia (dir: Solás, 1981). The dialectical use of music, and popular music in particular, is evident in the films of Brouwer’s frequent documentary collaborator, Santiago Álvarez. The two collaborated on a number of films between 1967 and 1983, including Hanoi, martes 13 (1967), La guerra olvidada (1967), Despegue a las 18:00 (1969), Y el suelo fue tomado por asalto (1973), Abril de Viet Nam en el año del gato (1975) and El primer delegado (1975), among others. Like Brouwer, Álvarez had a strong ear for music, and specifically, the dialectical potential of popular American recordings in documentary film. Álvarez had worked as a record librarian in a television studio before the revolution and, as Michael Chanan notes, had developed a keen sense of the possibilities of matching music with image (Chanan, 2007: 197). This is evident in his film Now (1965), which documents the civil rights struggle in the US. Josh Malitsky argues that Now established Álvarez as a creative force and this film challenged the relationship between the newsreel and the documentary in innovative ways. One of these ways was in the use of music, which sets images of the civil rights movement to the backdrop of Lena Horne’s ‘Now’, a black liberation anthem set to the Jewish dance song ‘Hava Nagila’. The film is rapidly edited and composed of live action footage of documents in the US. As Malitsky argues, the film follows the trajectory of the music, with the ‘editing rhythm speeding up to align with the increasing energy of Horne’s voice’ (Malitsky, 2013: 125). While the film was about the US, it was addressed to Cubans, foregrounding the racial progress made in Cuba in comparison. It links the revolutionary spirit in the US to the one in Cuba and worked to allay fears that Cuba would follow a similar path (Malitsky, 2013: 125). Similar to newsreel #49, Álvarez’s documentary appropriates the music of a popular American singer and highlights the inherently revolutionary spirit of the song. Popular American music is thus appropriated in order to critique the situation in the US as well as to justify and support the Cuban state and its revolutionary ethos. To speak in Deleuzian terms, the film re-territorializes the song, re-locating its spirit to the revolutionary culture of Cuba. This dialectical use of music is also evident in another prominent Álvarez documentary, 79 Primaveras (1969). While popular American music was



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unpopular among sectarian interests – and hard line communists – in Cuba at the time, Álvarez and Brouwer used rock music in the film to stress its inherently anti-oppressive spirit. The film uses a number of different musical styles in order to achieve greater dialectical effects in the viewing audience. In particular, Álvarez employs the seemingly oppositional musical genres of classical music and heavy metal, Bach and Iron Butterfly, as a means of creating a strong aural collision for the viewer. Aural dialectics are for Álvarez, therefore, a crucial component of his filmmaking, drawing attention to the intentional use of music as a formal device within film narrative. Brouwer’s theories on music are also reflected in the work of the Grupo de Experimentación Sonora ICAIC, a musical group formed in 1969 under the leadership of Leo Brouwer with the purpose of composing music for Cuban films. Other prominent members of the group included Silvio Rodríguez, Pablo Milanés, Noel Nicola and Sara González, artists that were all linked to the Nueva Trova musical movement that emerged in the mid- to late 1960s. This musical style was rooted in Cuban folk musical traditions but was distinguished by its politicized lyrics. The most recognizable figure is perhaps Silvio Rodríguez, who wrote and performed numerous songs that address the Cuban revolution in celebratory and romantic ways. Notable songs of his include Ojalá, Unicornio Azul, La Maza and Playa Girón, about the US invasion of the Bay of Pigs in 1961. The group scored music for twenty-four films between 1970 and 1975, the majority of which were documentaries. One of the notable features about their work was their commitment to the fusion of musical styles. One of the members of the group, Leonardo Acosta, describes the experimental aspect of the group, which aimed to use and blend different styles and traditions in their film scoring: In the first year of the group (1969) we developed a revolutionary system for studying the theory and practice of music by combining all possible styles: from Beethoven to John Coltrane, Gilberto Gil to Ravi Shankar, Anton von Webern to Xenakis, Frank Zappa to Blood, Sweat and Tears, Sindo Garay to Juan Blanco, and of course, from Bach to the Beatles. (El Grupo de Experimentación Sonora ICAIC, n.d.)

Critics have argued that the group was a refuge for perceived effete musicians during the later 1960s, when a more macho period of revolutionary identity dominated Cuban discourse (King, 2000: 147). This may in part explain why they did not have a large impact on the musical scene in Cuban films following

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their inauguration. Despite their short period of musical compositions for Cuban films, the group embodies an important experimental aspect of postrevolutionary film in Cuba. It also highlights the important role afforded to music within Cuban national cinema as an aesthetic component in its own right. Cuban artists in this period were looking not only to bring various musical styles and traditions together but also to combine them with other aesthetic forms such as film. According to Carlos León, who was an early member of the group, the group was primarily an expression of the creative and spontaneous energies of the revolution, and reflected a society in the process of transformation (León, 2012).

Folkloric sounds and critique: Nicolás Guillén Landrián While the predominant use of music in Cuban film in the 1960s was as a critique or ‘exorcism’ of Hollywood music as ideology or as an expression of the revolutionary ethos, it was also used in more ambiguous ways, registering a critique of aspects of Cuban revolutionary nationalism. This is evident in the films of Nicolás Guillén Landrián, a filmmaker who made a number of experimental ethnographic and documentary films in the 1960s. He is perhaps most famous, or notorious, for having been imprisoned by the Cuban government, winding up in exile in Miami. Like Álvarez, Nicolasito used a number of musical styles, both folkloric and popular, in his documentaries. One thing that distinguishes his films from those of Álvarez, however, is his more ambivalent representations of the Cuban revolution and key figures. Landrián’s films often satirized aspects of the revolutionary government, which eventually led to the withdrawal of his films from circulation in Cuba. Music plays a large role in his films, assuming a frequently critical function. His most notorious use of music is in his 1968 film, Coffea Arábiga, which records the efforts of the government-led coffee growing campaign. In the film, Landrián creates a striking aural-visual juxtaposition between the image of Fidel Castro and the Beatles’ song, ‘The Fool on the Hill’ (1967). This unsubtle critique of Castro, using a musical group that was briefly banned in Cuba at the time, cemented Landrián’s fate, and ultimate exile, according to Michael Chanan (2007: 200). One of the distinguishing features of Landrián’s films is the prominent use of Afro-Cuban folkloric and religious music. For instance, Afro-Cuban music and religious tradition plays a prominent role in his 1963 film En Un Barrio Viejo/



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In an Old Neighbourhood. In the film, the camera lurks around an old neighbourhood of an unspecified Cuban city, drawing attention to small-business workers, the elderly, and other marginalized people in the city. These marginal figures are contrasted with the more prominent, dynamic activities of active agents in the revolution – young militants, student activists/literacy teachers and members of the CDR (Committee for the Defence of the Revolution). In an opening sequence, for example, we see a barber cutting hair and old men playing chess on the street as a group of militants march by with intention and fanfare. The film draws attention to other subjectivities and practices that are not directly connected with revolutionary mobilization: an Afro-Cuban drum circle, a young boy carrying a block of ice, children lingering in the streets and people drinking coffee at a cantina. These fly-on-the-wall images are shown in contrast to icons of the Cuban revolution, such as posters of Castro. In one sequence, the camera lingers on an image of Castro with a caption that reads: ‘¡Basta ya! de tolerancia con lo mal hecho’ [Enough tolerance already with that which is poorly made]. Another scene shows a group of young militants marching in the street and then cuts to a billboard image of a large eye, signalling the importance of vigilance and surveillance in the face of threats to the revolution. Underscoring these contrasting images of revolutionary mobilization and everyday life are the prominent strains of traditional Afro-Cuban music. While this music appears during the film, it is most notable at the outset and ending of the film, serving as bookends for the documentary. The opening credit sequence, for instance, features a still image of a black worker underscored by Afro-Cuban drumming also heard later in the film. The use of this music is notable for a number of reasons. First, the music is linked to the syncretic religious practice of Santería, a practice that draws primarily on the Yoruba traditions of West Africa (Mason, 2002: 8). While Santería practitioners in Cuba are diverse (both black and white), the tradition is largely associated with the Afro-Cuban community and Landrián’s film features only black participants. This is notable given the fact that the official rhetoric of the Cuban revolution de-emphasized the role of race within Cuba, arguing officially that racism or racialism did not exist in the post-revolutionary ethos (de la Fuente, 2008). In the last quarter of the film, for example, Landrián records the practices and music of a traditional ceremony in the modest home of an all-black community. Like earlier sequences in the film, the drumming and chanting is contrasted with images of Fidel Castro, Camilo Cienfuegos, the 26 July movement and the Cuban flag, all displayed prominently in the home. This contrast is amplified by the fact that organized

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religious practices were barred in Cuba after the revolution, and Afro-Cuban practices were linked with mental illness (Ayorinde, 2004). By drawing explicit and sustained attention to the traditions and music of Afro-Cuban religion, and pairing them with icons of the Cuban revolution, Landrián performs an interrogation, of sorts, of official state doctrine. Landrián’s visual and acoustic pairing seems to try to expand the discursive boundaries of the ‘revolutionary subject’ in the politically charged days of the early 1960s. At a time when Cuban cultural and national identity was being fiercely articulated through the lens of the revolution, Landrián’s use of music draws attention to an important and uniquely Cuban cultural identity that is perhaps omitted in this new discursive identity. Music is important here because it expresses a potential emotional voice and it is also ideologically ambiguous. The music is indexically expressive, pointing specifically and unambiguously to Afro-Cuban religious practitioners. At the same time, however, music is ideologically ambiguous: it does not critique official religious policy explicitly or directly. In this way, music functions as an important catalyst for debate and questions around an issue that is ideologically charged and politically dangerous.

Music and ambiguity in the special period In this last section, I want to briefly discuss the role of music in the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union, known in Cuba as the Special Period. As the economic crisis forced Cuba to seek new means of generating national revenue, Cuba became open in unprecedented ways to the global economy in general and international tourism more specifically. One dominant strain of Cuban culture that came to be expressed through tourism was that of Cuban music, particularly traditional son. As many of the classic songs and ballads of Cuban folk music became increasingly commodified by the tourism industry, much of the nationalist and political content of these songs was diluted. This is addressed in one of the early films of the Special Period, Guantanamera (dir: Alea, 1995), a film that uses the popular Cuban folk song as a means of interrogating and critiquing the effects of the Special Period on Cuban national and revolutionary identity. As many have argued, the collapse of the Soviet Union presented a number of challenges to Cuba, economically and ideologically (Brenner et al., 2008). The economic challenges affected the Cuban film industry acutely, and altered the



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ways in which Cuban films were produced. As a result of the severe economic crisis the country faced in the 1990s, the Cuban film industry could no longer rely solely on government sources to finance its films. For the first time since the Cuban revolution, ICAIC was forced to venture onto the international market to seek foreign co-productions. As Cristina Venegas argues, these changes to the economic structure of filmmaking also affected the content of Cuban films as many of the co-productions tended ‘to be about Cuba from a vantage point located outside Cuba’ (2009: 1). Cuban films began to orient themselves more to an international audience rather than to a strictly Cuban audience. The content of Cuban films was also affected by the economic hardships experienced in the Special Period. A great many of the films reflected the economic and existential problems facing everyday Cubans during this time such as food shortages, transportation delays, housing problems and the meaning of cubanidad given the collapse. Much of the ambivalence to these changes in the economic and ideological context of post-Soviet Cuba is reflected in the film melodramas that emerged after 1991. As I have argued elsewhere, the melodramatic mode was particularly suited to registering ambivalence to the changes wrought after the fallout (Balaisis, 2010). Some notable examples of high melodrama in the postSoviet period in Cuba include Fresa y chocolate (dir: Alea, 1994), Guantanamera (dir: Alea, 1995), Miel para Ochún (dir: Solás, 2001), and Barrio Cuba (dir: Solás, 2005). As melodramas, music featured prominently in these films and provided a means of expressing the generalized ambivalence experienced in the post-Soviet period. One example that makes particularly interesting use of music is Alea’s 1995 film Guantanamera. It chronicles the transportation of a corpse from the east of Cuba to the west (Havana). When Aunt Yoyita dies during a visit to Guantánamo, her childhood sweetheart Cándido must take her body to Havana alongside the undertaker and bureaucrat Adolpho and his wife Gina. The journey across the country is a useful conceit that permits Alea to document the emerging phenomena taking place in Cuba in the early and mid-1990s. For example, the film depicts the emergence of the US dollar as a mode of currency within Cuba, the scarcity of public transportation and the increased dependence on hitchhiking as a mode of travel. The film also shows the emergence of gas and food shortages, private enterprise in the form of private restaurants (paladares), and the increasing presence of international tourists and tour buses. The journey is underscored by the use of the popular Cuban folk song Guantanamera, which serves as a unifying motif throughout the film.

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The use of the iconic song to anchor the narrative of the film in intriguing for its associations to both Cuba’s past and present. While the song’s origins are not decisively known, its composition is generally attributed to the songwriter José Fernández Díaz (1908–79) in 1928 (Manuel, 2006). The song assumes the form of Cuban guajira-son, a folk musical genre that is associated with peasant culture. Traditional guajira music consisted of regional varieties of punto, in which improvisers, typically accompanied by guitar, would improvise in the Spanish decima format (Manuel, 2006: 123). The most popular version of the song was arranged by American singer Pete Seeger, and uses lyrics from the poetry of the nineteenth-century Cuban poet and revolutionary José Martí. This is the most recognizable of its variations, and contains perhaps one of its most repeated verses: Yo soy un hombre sincero De donde crece la palma, Y antes de morir me quiero Echar mis versos del alma.2 (Martí, 2002: 273)

The song was popularized in the 1930s and evoked the culture of Cuban campesinos that have long been associated with Cuba’s authentic national and cultural identity (Rivero, 2007). While the musical form was popularized by urban musicians and largely enjoyed by urban residents in Cuba, the song and its ‘bucolic texts […] typically romanticized peasant life and countryside’ (p. 123). One of the important aspects of the song was that its structure – originating from campesino forms – allowed it to be flexibly interpreted by different singers and artists. The use of Guantanamera throughout the film works to highlight the ambivalent ideological condition within the country at the time. The film draws upon the many historical associations of the song within Cuba: from pastoral and folk expressions and cubanidad, to expressions of revolutionary nationalism as mediated through the lyrics of José Martí. More importantly, the use of the song also calls attention to the emergence of global tourism in Cuba and the commodification of Cuban cultural forms. As tourism began to grow exponentially throughout the 1990s, the song was used increasingly in performances, staged and impromptu, for international tourists on the streets of Havana and at resorts in Varadero, Cayo Coco and Holgúin. Within this rapidly changing context, the song served less as an expression of Cuban nationalism and revolutionary identity than as a stereotypical version



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of Cuban culture desired by foreign eyes. This was similar to other resurgent cultural forms oriented to tourists such as the blackface habanera dolls that were increasingly visible at vendor tables in the 1990s (Lane, 2010). Like the vendor dolls and other tourist trinkets, Guantanamera became ubiquitous in post-Soviet Cuba, prominently heard in the lobbies, beaches and lounges of international hotels and resorts, and at Cuban restaurants and music clubs aimed at visitors throughout the country.3 The repetition of the song throughout the film calls attention to the emergent Cuban soundscape in the early 1990s, where Cuban folk songs were increasingly heard in public and private spaces for the enjoyment of foreign audiences. Indeed, the release of the film in 1995 coincided roughly with the recording of the Cuban folk album, Buena Vista Social Club, produced by American singer Ry Cooder in 1996. This was a hugely successful international release that topped the Billboard world and Latin music charts in 1997 and increased global attention to traditional Cuban son. This album was followed by the documentary of the same name by German director Wim Wenders (Buena Vista Social Club, 1999). In the same way that habanera dolls and international co-productions shifted the orientation of Cuban cultural production to a foreign audience, traditional Cuban son was increasingly linked to the tourism industry and a commodified version of Cuban culture. The repeated use of Guantanamera throughout Alea’s film serves as a means of mapping some of the ambiguities experienced in the country as it faced the existential challenges of the Special Period. On one hand, it served to punctuate the difficulties facing Cubans at an economic level, at the same time as it highlights the imperfect economic solution of tourism. At this level, the music appears to be used ironically, as a sad commentary on the loss of a robust nationalism envisioned by the early incarnations of the song in the 1960s. On the other hand, the film uses the song as a transcendent force, calling upon its long history of interpretation and improvisation, signalling cultural resilience in the face of current struggles. In the same way that the song has been interpreted multiple times by different artists, it speaks to the capacity of Cubans to endure in spite of change and uncertainty. While the film critiques the economic crisis in Cuba, the song Guantanamera, which persists in the extra-diegetic narrative space, ‘sounds’ a voice of reassurance and continuity in the face of dramatic change and uncertainty. In this way, the song echoes another often-heard sound voiced at rallies and on television during the period: the dramatic exclamation Venceremos! (We shall triumph!).

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Conclusions Over the course of this essay, I have tried to show how music has been used intentionally as a critical, dialectical device within a number of Cuban films. In these instances, music has not been used as a backdrop or supplement to the visual or narrative components of the films, but as an equally important aesthetic element. Specifically, I have endeavoured to show how the aural, musical aspects of these films have been central to their dialectical aims, helping to stimulate critical reflection in the viewer, and intervening in key ideological debates within the Cuban national context. In the early post-revolutionary films of Santiago Álvarez, for example, popular music was used intentionally to call attention to the historical use of music in Hollywood or Latin American cinema (as background music), as well as to the conventional boundary distinctions within bourgeois music categorization (i.e. separating Bach from Iron Butterfly). In a different way, Nicolás Guillén Landrián’s use of popular and traditional Afro-Cuban music worked to critique some of the more restrictive ideological policies within Cuba, and invited broader consideration of central discursive tenets in post-revolutionary Cuba, such as the meaning of ‘revolutionary’ itself. While Cuban media has limited the kind of open debate associated with the democratic public sphere, film has provided a space where something akin to a public sphere may be located (Balaisis, 2010; Chanan, 2008). It has been within the narratives of Cuban popular cinema, for example, where issues of public and political concern have been addressed in often nuanced and complex ways, serving as an alternative public sphere and in contrast to news reports on official Cuban media (Vigil, 2008). The use of music within these films has contributed, I argue, to the public dimension of these texts, enhancing their dialectical force by engaging the viewer at the aural level.

Notes 1 Written by Max C. Freedman and James E. Myers. 2 I am an honest man, from where the palm tree grows, and I want, before I die, to cast these verses from my soul. (Translation by Esther Allen.) 3 Living not far from the growing resort Cayo Coco between 1999 and 2000, I knew many Cuban musicians who made a living performing for foreign tourists at the local resorts, where Guantanamera was frequently performed.



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References Adorno T. (2004) ‘The Schema of Mass Culture’, in J. M. Bernstein (ed.) The Culture Industry. London: Routledge: 61–97. Alea, T. G. (1997) ‘The Viewer’s Dialectic’, in M. T. Martin (ed.) New Latin American Cinema. Philadelphia: Temple University Press: 108–34. Álvarez, S. (1968) ‘El cinema como uno de los medios masivos de comunicación’. Cine Cubano 49/51: 7–11. Ayorinde, C. (2004) Afro-Cuban Religiosity, Revolution, and National Identity. Gainesville: University of Florida. Balaisis, N. (2008) ‘The Publicness of Melodrama in the Cuban Special Period’. Public (37): 48–56. Balaisis, N. (2010) ‘Cuba, Cinema, and the Post-revolutionary Public Sphere’. Canadian Journal of Film Studies 19 (2): 26–42. Brenner P., M. Rose, J. Kirk and W. Leogrande (eds) (2008) A Contemporary Cuba Reader: Reinventing the Revolution. Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield. Buena Vista Social Club. Available online http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buena_Vista_ Social_Club_(album) [accessed 28 March 2014]. Buhler, J., C. Flynn and D. Neumeyer (eds) (2000) Music and Cinema. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press. Century, P. (1987) ‘Leo Brouwer: A Portrait of the Artist in Socialist Cuba’. Latin American Music Review 8 (2): 151–71. Chanan, M. (2004) Cuban Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Chanan, M. (2007) The Politics of Documentary. BFI: London. Chanan, M. (2008) ‘Cuban Cinema’, in P. Brenner, M. Rose, J. Kirk and W. Leogrande (eds) A Contemporary Cuba Reader: Reinventing the Revolution. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield: 360–4. Colina, E. and D. Torres (1978) ‘Ideology of Melodrama in the Old Latin American Cinema’, in Z. Pick (ed.) Latin American Filmmakers and the Third Cinema. Ottawa: Carleton University Film Program: 46–69. Colina, E. and D. Torres (n.d.) ‘El Melodrama en La Obra de Luís Buñuel’. Cine Cubano 78: 156–64. Deleuze, G. (2003) Cinema 2: The Time Image, trans. H. Tomlinson and R. Galeta. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. El Grupo De Experimentacion ICAIC. Available online: http://www.tunet.cult.cu/ pagsec/out/emiliano/files/ges.htm [accessed 28 March 2014]. Fuente, A. de la (2008) ‘Recreating Racism: Race and Discrimination in Cuba’s Special Period’, in P. Brenner, M. Rose, J. Kirk and W. Leogrande (eds) A Contemporary Cuba Reader: Reinventing the Revolution. Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield: 316–25. King, J. (2000) Magical Reels: A History of Cinema in Latin America. Verso: London.

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Lane, J. (2010) ‘Smoking Habaneras, Or a Cuban Struggle with Racial Demons’. Social Text 28 (3): 11–37. Leo Brouwer Mezquida. ICAIC website. Available online: http://www.cubacine.cult.cu/ sitios/musicos/leo.htm [accessed 28 March 2014]. León, C. (2012) ‘Un grupo que experimenta y abraza trova’. Available online: http:// www.cubacine.cult.cu/a_proposito/»-un-grupo-que-experimenta-y-abraza-trova [accessed 28 March 2014]. Malitsky, J. (2013) Post-revolution Non-fiction Film: Building the Soviet and Cuban Nations. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Manuel, P. (2006) ‘The Saga of a Song: Authorship and Ownership in the Case of “Guantanamera”’. Latin American Music Review 27 (2): 121–47. Martí, J. (2002) José Martí: Selected Writings, trans. E. Allen. Toronto: Penguin Classics. Mason, M. A. (2002) Living Santería: Rituals and Experiences in an Afro-Cuban Religion. Washington: Smithsonian Institute. McLuhan, M. (1995) Essential McLuhan. E. McLuhan and F. Zingrone (eds). Toronto: House of Anansi. Ong, W. J. (2002) Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Routledge. Orovio, H. (2004) Cuban Music from A to Z. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Perez, M. and J. Espinosa (1972) ‘El cine y la educación’. Cine Cubano 69/70: 5–17. Rivero, Y. M. (2007) ‘Broadcasting Modernity: Cuban Television, 1950–1953’. Cinema Journal 46 (3): 3–25. Venegas, C. (2009) ‘Filmmaking with Foreigners’, in A. Hernandez-Reguant (ed.) Cuba in the Special Period: Culture and Ideology in the 1990s. New York: PalgraveMacMillan: 37–51. Vigil, M. L. (2008) ‘The Cuban Media’, in P. Brenner, M. Rose, J. Kirk and W. Leogrande (eds) A Contemporary Cuba Reader: Reinventing the Revolution. Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield: 386–92.

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Sobre las Olas, Waltz and Films: Classical Music and Mexican Identity Armida de la Garza

University College Cork, Ireland

Analyses in English of the contribution of music to the creation of a national cinema in Mexico have so far mostly been restricted to research on folk music in the ‘Comedia Ranchera’. Indeed, Latin American genres that are heavily reliant on music – the Argentine tango film, the Brazilian chanchada – are often understood, somewhat inaccurately, as forms of hybridization or indigenization of the Hollywood musical, that in various ways appropriated the form and used it as a vehicle for the expression of national cultures (Hart, 2004: 5), the Comedia Ranchera being one such form in Mexican cinema. Along these lines, Marvin D’Lugo understands the genre as a reaction towards modernization that saw a romanticized version of rural life in pre-revolutionary, quasi-feudal haciendas, ironically taken to the cinema, the urban new medium of modernity (D’Lugo, 2010). Also important has been Ceri Higgins’s research on the way the synergies between cinema and the radio were central to the flourishing of the genre, as record companies sought to use film to advertise music and vice-versa, both industries sharing the same owners (Higgins, 2008). Classical music however has so far been ignored, despite the fact that it was often used as narrative support in a number of melodramas and historical and other films that also had at least partly nationalist agendas, and was sometimes written by Mexican composers. In this article I explore the use of the music of indigenous composer, pianist and violinist, Juventino Rosas, in the two versions of his life entitled Sobre las Olas (Over the Waves), after his most famous waltz. The first one, by Miguel Zacarías in 1932 starring Adolfo Girón, sought to capitalize on sound, which had recently been introduced to Mexican cinema. The second and better known, by Ismael Rodríguez in 1950 starring Pedro

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Infante was most probably an attempt to draw on the prestige of classical music for Infante’s star image. In the paragraphs that follow, I start by providing a brief summary of Rosas’s life, then comparing the way both films employ the conventions of the biopic to ascribe the life and work of a classical musician as ‘Mexican’, the value accorded to classical music and the way that the attempts to portray it as a part of European high culture of which indigenous Mexican musicians nonetheless also partook, was fraught with ambiguity and contradiction. For although the biopic has been derided as a propagandist and pedagogical genre that frequently falsifies history for the sake of drama, biopics on musicians offer the opportunity to explore the relationship between image and sound in film in more depth. Music here is neither something ‘tacked-on’ in post-production, nor a ‘wilfully coherent pre-existing unit inserted into a cinematic cavity. Instead it is a prominent bearer of far-reaching cultural propositions’ (Dickinson, 2003: 7). In this chapter I seek to explore some of those propositions in these particular cases. I finish by briefly considering this construction of national identity in both films in the light of Gilles Deleuze’s definition of the ‘minor in cinema’ – a terminology that, incidentally, offers more connotations in relation to music – as that which does not represent or address a people as oppressed and subjected, but anticipates instead ‘a people to be created, a consciousness to be brought into existence’ (Deleuze, 2009).

The Rosas story Different biographies stress different facts (Barreiro Lastra, 1994; Brenner, 2000), and more importantly, ascribe them positive or negative values depending on the biographer and the historical context in which they were written.1 They all however agree that Juventino Rosas Cadenas was born on 25 January 1868 in a small village that today bears his name, then called Santa Cruz, in Guanajuato, Mexico, into an indigenous family of street performers. He learned to play the violin from his father and elder brother. He also had a younger sister who performed with them as singer. In 1876 General Porfirio Díaz came into power and the family moved to Mexico City. Mexico had been an independent nation for only sixty-six years, and during this period, liberal and conservative forces, pushing for republican



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and monarchical projects respectively, had dominated. Although Díaz had fought with the liberals, he turned out to rule conservatively in many regards and his time in office was characterized by a desire to fashion Mexican identity according to European standards, ignoring or actively deriding its indigenous heritage. His cabinet was almost entirely composed of Europeans or Mexicans of European descent, and the urban landscape too was made to resemble Paris. French was taught at schools, and European classical music, highly prestigious, was played in concert and dance halls, with piano the instrument that women in the upper classes would learn to play – some of these would have been students of Rosas’s. He attempted to study at the Conservatory twice, but left each time due to severe economic problems and poor health, possibly related to alcoholism and the untimely death of his parents and brother. In some accounts he had a brief and unhappy marriage with a woman named Juana Morales. The circumstances in which he wrote his most famous work, the waltz ‘Sobre las Olas’,2 originally entitled ‘Junto al Manantial’ (By the Spring River) are contested. In one version, this was inspired by the Magdalena River, which runs beside the parish where Rosas was living at the time, while in another version this would have been the water from a canal in a nearby factory. Accounting for this is a key strand of the plot in both biopics, as Rosas’s name has metonymically become synonymous with this work in popular culture. He frequented the main patrons on whose protection art flourished in nineteenth-century Mexico, even performing his waltz ‘Carmen’ before Carmen Romero Rubio who inspired it, wife of then president Díaz, and receiving a piano for this. Eventually he excelled as a performer, travelling throughout the country, the United States and Cuba with various ensembles and orchestras to much critical acclaim, receiving prizes and recognitions, including four gold medals at the World Exhibition in Chicago in 1893. Although he was a prolific composer, the more than 100 waltzes, polkas, mazurkas and schottisches he wrote in a period of barely eight years did not earn him a living as these were dance pieces, and thus not as highly regarded as salon music, which was more complex, and certainly not as concert pieces, the most challenging to play. He faced financial troubles throughout most of his life and his situation was dire when he left for Cuba in 1894, where he performed for only six months before contracting spinal myelitis. He died there on 9 July, nine days after being admitted into hospital. He was twenty-six years old. In 1909 his mortal remains were repatriated, and he was eventually buried at the Illustrious Person Rotunda in the Dolores Cemetery in Mexico City.

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Sixteen years after Rosas’s death, the revolution started, lasting about ten years. By the 1920s when the war was over, the Ministry of Education headed by José Vasconcelos engaged in a large-scale attempt to produce artistic representations of indigenous populations and the working classes, famously including the commissioning of murals by Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros (Smith, 2004). More important to the context in which the Rosas story would later be told however was Vasconcelos’s attitude to music, as he devoted his first book to a complex and somewhat Bergsonian theory of epistemology that had rhythm at its heart, arguing that the ultimate essence of the universe is energy, which manifests itself according to varying rhythms.3 Vasconcelos’s time as Minister of Education saw considerable attempts to raise the prestige of popular music to match that of symphonic music, and by the end of the decade it was not uncommon to find indigenous popular music such as ‘Estrellita’, ‘Alma Sonorense’ and ‘Ojos Tapatíos’ played alongside music by Bach, Chopin, SaintSaenz, Debussy or Sibelius (Florescano, 2005: 319–20).

Sobre las Olas (Dir: Zacarías 1932 and dir: Rodríguez 1950) It is in this context of redefinition of national identity following the major upheaval of the revolution, and the reappraisal of the role of music in this process, that the first version of Rosas’s life was filmed, as sound had recently been introduced to cinema. His status as an indigenous classical musician, a composer as well as a performer, presented an ideal opportunity for a film with a nationalist agenda to inscribe classical music in the cultural history of the country, while further developing the national film industry – which was strong at the time, competing, in terms of revenue, with that generated by oil or tourism (López Tarso, 2013). The film lasts sixty-three minutes and features Adolfo Girón as Rosas, a composer as well as an actor, who himself plays the piano in most scenes where this is shown: Carmen Gutiérrez plays Margarita, the piano student he falls in love with, and René Cardona was cast to the role of Margarita’s fiancé, Raúl. In addition to various pieces by Rosas, Verdi’s ‘Triumphal March’ from Aida is also played (by Margarita), and music listed as ‘descriptive’ in the credits sequence was composed by Max Urban. The violin is played by Lauro Uranga. The Rodríguez brothers were responsible for the sound. This version is above all Romantic, as was Rosas’s music, with form and content matching closely. It has been argued that Romantic artists, musicians



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included, came to see themselves as bearers of a creative imagination that arose at least in part as a reaction against the instrumentalism of rationalism, industrialization, urbanization and its consequences, such as social inequalities, overcrowding and disease. In this context, art, in their view, ought to have a mainly ethical and humanizing function (Belifiore and Bennett, 2008: 135). This was indeed the social context in Mexico in the nineteenth century when Rosas was playing, the period the film sought to recreate. By the middle of that century, art had started to be seen as incompatible with any didactic or moral function, so the Romantic position became instead that art should be valued for its own sake. Eleonora Belifiore and Oliver Bennett put this down to a ‘painful awareness of the tensions […] of the imperatives of aesthetic production, and the requirements of a prospering cultural market based on the fundamental principle of providing the public with what it wants’ (Belifiore and Bennett, 2008: 183). It is this position that the first version of Rosas’s life illustrates, while highlighting the social injustice of the Porfiriato. Through mise-en-scène, and mainly through its use of sound, the film thoroughly succeeds in its recreation of the cultural life in nineteenth-century Mexico, for ‘if music is time, the music from our past is time frozen in time, just like the amber that captures insects in a precise instant’ (Miranda and Quirarte, 2010: 45). The 1950 version on the other hand was made amidst a bourgeois counterrevolution during the administration of Miguel Alemán (1946–52). This administration reversed the radical, left-leaning term of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–40), which had aimed to implement measures according to the goals of the revolution – as regards land reform, rural and non-confessional education, and ethnic and gender equality – and privileged instead a growth strategy centred on large-scale industrialization that severely crushed the labour movement. This situation found cultural expression in a series of films, indeed a whole new genre, that looked sympathetically and nostalgically upon the Porfiriato, in which a type of folk music was essential and in which Infante had partly made his name. This was the Comedia Ranchera. The quasi-feudal haciendas of those days were presented as organic and integrated units, devoid of internal conflict, cleavage or contradiction. They were presided over by benevolent and paternalistic landlords, and inhabited by devoted and happy peasants, with the plots revolving around the problems that arose precisely as a result of characters refusing or not fitting their prescribed class/ethnic identities. Plots were thus resolved once the ‘charro’ stars, Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete and Luis Aguilar,

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‘returned everyone to their place’ (Ramírez-Berg, 1992: 99), singing all the way through. Idealization of the Porfiriato is also evident in that the dictator himself, absent in the first version, is here a secondary but benevolent character. Rosas has no brother fighting for democracy. And Díaz is the motivation for much of the music played during the film – for instance, Rosas composes and plays the waltz for Díaz’s wife, and sings; he then plays the tuba at an event attended by the president, and later conducts the orchestra to play ‘Sobre las Olas’ on his request, during a New Year dinner attended by the Diplomatic Corps. These different historical contexts may also largely account for the ways in which different events from Rosas’s life were selected to focus on, and be framed, and the overall narrative structure of the films. I first compare the credit sequences, the way the Rosas character is introduced, the account on the origin of ‘Sobre las Olas’ that is offered, and finally the way in which music is bound with gender and class in each of these versions, to symbolically harness classical music into differing narratives of national identity.

Figure 1  Sobre las olas, dir. Ismael Rodríguez (Producciones Rodríguez Hermanos, 1950). Printed by permission of Filmoteca UNAM.



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Credit sequences The 1932 film is established as both a historical film and a biopic from the very beginning, with the credit sequence appearing in a nineteenth-century style embroidery frame on a tapestried wall with designs from that period. Names are displayed on the canvas. It is significant that the metaphor employed is thus one of a cultural product, as it has been argued that progressive biopics tend to favour nurture over nature as a means of accounting for talent, stressing the social construction of art, whereas conservative narratives put it down to nature, in the form of a pre-disposition held from birth (Custen, 2001: 89), thus naturalizing inequality. The last frame sets the date as: ‘Time: end of the last century’. The 1950 version, by contrast, presents itself as a biopic proper, rather than a historical film, from the credits sequence, which in this case draws from nature rather than culture, consisting of names appearing written in sand that are washed away by the waves while ‘Sobre las Olas’ is played. The very first of these, occupying the whole screen, is for Infante in his role of Rosas, thus clearly seeking to claim for his star persona – already identified with folk and pop music as a performer – the prestige and status of classical music, and of Rosas as a composer. It further de-historicizes the biography as it is narrated in a flashback, starting and ending with the same scene, depicting two friends of Rosas sitting by the seaside remembering the date he left for Havana, right there,

Figure 2  Sobre las olas, dir. Miguel Zacarías (Producciones Zacarías S.A., 1932)

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and the date ‘he came back’ (i.e. the day his body was repatriated), thus establishing a loop in time rather than a slice in a linear sequence as with the 1932 version. It lasts 128 minutes. Alicia Neira, José Luis Jiménez, Beatríz Aguirre and Prudencia Grifell co-starred, and Raúl Lavista (1913–80) was responsible for the music. The credit sequences thus already announce the different focus of these films: the first, on Rosas, the artist: the second, on Rosas, the man. Although neither film offers a chronological account of his life, but both centre around an unspecified period prior to his departure to Cuba when he was living with his mother – and, in the first film, his brother, a tailor actively engaged in politics against Díaz – they differ markedly on the way Rosas and his music are first introduced.

Introducing the Rosas character The 1932 version starts with a scene of a village street, and a passionate violin solo coming from a window, which starts as the backdrop to the actions of people outside – children who gather near the window to listen attentively, a couple who suddenly kiss, a passer-by that frowns upon them – to gradually taking the forefront, as the camera ‘follows’ the music into the Rosas’s home (where a guitar also hangs from a wall), and we see him playing. Well beyond an establishing shot, the scene lasts as long as it takes to complete the solo, with the camera dwelling slowly on the actions of listeners outside. Music is thus introduced as first and foremost a vital part of the public space, and shared. Its impact on the micro-society of the neighbourhood takes precedence over the

Figure 3  Sobre las olas, dir. Ismael Rodríguez (Producciones Rodríguez Hermanos, 1950)



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private affair of playing the violin in the confined indoor spaces of Rosas’s home or the mansions of the wealthy patrons of the arts, which follow. The 1950 version by contrast closely matches the standard way in which artists’ biopics were made in Hollywood at the time. From a sociological perspective, these biopics are understood as a kind of homeostatic device to ensure ordinariness: ‘the public is meant to take innovation as deviation, and the price of greatness a price too high to pay’ (Custen, 2001: 91). The Rosas we get in this version of Sobre las Olas is first introduced on his arrival to a soirée at the home of the Alfaro Gutiérrez family, wealthy patrons of the arts, apparently as a friend of one of the guests. He is totally drunk and behaves aggressively. Although he can barely stand and has even pawned his violin to buy tequila, he borrows one and masterfully plays a solo, drawing praise from all guests, so the greatness is confirmed. And indeed, Sobre las Olas 1950 leaves us in no doubt that tragedy follows those who deviate, especially musicians. Rosas’s life is marked by unrequited love, dire poverty, an unhappy marriage, the untimely death of his mother, wife and his stillborn child, and ultimately by being wrongly accused of plagiarism over Sobre las Olas,4 which prompts him into exile, and death. Equally emphasized is the fate of gifted opera singer Angela Peralta (1845–83), with whom he is shown to have performed once. She contracts yellow fever and also dies tragically, aged thirty-eight. From a psychological perspective, it has been argued these biopics actually effected a kind of symbolic abjection in which the artist becomes ‘the cultural scapegoat’: the beloved art works are idealized, but in order to do this, the films must ‘represent artists as abject figures, poverty stricken, sexually unrestrained, alcoholic, drug addicted, money squandering […] and abusive’ (Codell, 2014: 159). For most of the film, Rosas remains mostly drunk, becomes a thief and an army deserter, and possibly a wife beater. Crucially, artists’ biopics must show or imply their death, since this stage is necessary in the ‘cleansing process that makes art transcendent and “timeless” by freeing it from bodies and histories’ (Codell, 2014: 160). Sobre las Olas 1950 performs a work of abjection and cleansing, not quite showing the moment of Rosas’s death but rather using the flashback scene mentioned above, beginning at the point when the body is being repatriated from Cuba, by boat. The cleansing is thus completed, here also symbolically by the water, which evokes the film and the waltz’s title. The 1932 version could not have been more different. Having introduced Rosas through his music and its impact, the salons to which his landlord and patron Mr Apolinar then takes him are all centres of thriving intellectual and

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artistic life in the nineteenth century. Rosas is there shown playing the violin again, along with the most famous musicians of his time: pianist Ricardo Castro – with the latter’s romantic piece ‘Canto de Amor’ – and Ernesto Elorduy. Also in attendance are writer Federico Gamboa – whose novel Santa had just been adapted into the first ever Mexican film with sound; poets José Juan Tablada and Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, who read poems; sculptor Jesús Contreras; painter Julio Ruelas; and cartoonist José María Villazana, whose work is shown on screen as he produces a cartoon of Mr Apolinar on the spot. Point of view shots, along with the strong sense of temporal unity and duration the music provides, carefully work to place viewers as part of the audience at the salon. Guests are sitting around a table, or standing near the piano. It is from this point that the shots are taken, bringing in, as it were, the viewer as another guest in the salon. By contrast, at the public events where Rosas plays in the 1950 version a number of crane and angle shots continuously preclude this identification. This is the case at a climactic scene when he is directing the national orchestra at the Chapultepec castle, playing ‘Sobre las Olas’ for the New Year celebrations. Significantly, the piano has here a far greater role than the violin, since Infante plays while singing. Given that the motivation of this biopic was at least in part to advance Infante’s career, it seems fitting that the piano would be so central. For the piano has been described as the instrument, the product, around which the modern entertainment industry was created. All the mutually reinforcing, social-boundary-crossing systems by which giant media corporations today market their products grew out of marketing systems created a century ago around the piano. (Parakilas, 2002: 4)

These strategies included the virtuoso concert tour, with its attendant publicity, the development of a national music press, and a deep influence on the operas that were eventually staged: almost exactly the same strategies followed by the film industry in its pursuit of profit. It is also the instrument that, on its ability to embody the textural richness of a whole orchestra has been compared to the film projector itself, capable of enveloping its audience in illusion (Parakilas, 2002).

Accounting for the piece ‘Sobre las Olas’ In the 1932 version, other occasions for Rosas to play are provided by his role as a teacher. In addition to the salons and soirées, Apolinar also introduces him



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Figure 4  Sobre las olas, dir. Miguel Zacarías (Producciones Zacarías S.A., 1932). Printed by permission of Filmoteca UNAM.

to the wealthy family of his niece, Margarita, who is engaged to a prosperous lawyer and is learning to play the piano. On his arrival at the mansion where she lives, he declines the butler’s offer to carry his violin, signalling its importance to him (unlike the Rosas of Rodríguez, who had pawned his, as noted above). Although Margarita’s mother, who chaperones the session, is at first weary of him, she gradually softens her stance as she is touched by the music. He becomes Margarita’s teacher, and it is during these sessions that most of the diegetic music is heard. First, by Bach and Liszt, and then the waltzes he composes for her: ‘Flores de Margarita’ (Daisies), and ‘El Sueño de las Flores’ (The Dream of Flowers). It is also Margarita who provides inspiration for ‘Sobre las Olas’, by reading him quotations about music that she collects and keeps in her diary. Strongly echoing Vasconcelos’s position on rhythm, one quotation reads ‘the sea is the ultimate manifestation of harmony. Blessed the artist who can bring into his work the rhythm of the waves’. Shortly after this, Rosas composes his famous waltz while engaged in reveries by the famous canal in Xochimilco, south of Mexico City, its legendary volcanoes in

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the background, while he can almost see Margarita’s image reflected on the water, where it dissolves. This interweaving of the landscapes with Margarita’s image and music binds them together in an instance of what Mikhail Bakhtin has called the ‘chronotope’: an artistic rendition that intrinsically connects time and space, and the very fabric of national narratives of identity (Bakhtin, 1981). In contrast to the shots of Rosas playing at the salon, where there were no windows, the piano room in Margarita’s home overlooks a garden, evoking romantic imagery of paradise. Their falling in love is audibly as well as visually conveyed by their playing, in an extreme close-up, music written for piano with four hands. Rather than romantic love, in the 1950 version – as in most other of Infante’s films – Catholicism is a key element of the national identity and it is here the way of accounting for his composing ‘Sobre las Olas’. While nationalism during the progressive governments of the 1930s had made the working classes and indigenous peoples central to the identity, by the 1950s the counter-revolutionary governments aligned nationalism instead with conservative and even reactionary ideologies that opposed it to Communism instead, establishing what would be a fruitful and long-lasting alliance with religion. So in this version Rosas composes his most famous piece on the occasion of his wife announcing that she is pregnant, while his best friend compares her to the Virgin Mary. Rosas is suddenly seized by a fit of inspiration, and followed by them, walks along the Magdalena River, playing the tune on the violin. Previously, his mother had said, when encouraging him to go on a tour, ‘you are an artist. And when God blows the divine breath of art into a man, he no longer belongs to himself, because to go against art is to go against God, as He is the utmost beauty.’ The importance of classical music for Catholicism at a time when Mexican society was profoundly religious and music a key means of religious expression and instruction at the same time, is in the 1930 version conveyed, by contrast, in scenes with no dialogue, in which symbols of the Church are the subject of long shots, with no speech, and no diegetic action. A crane shot of an organ dominates footage of the cathedral, where people are seen coming out of Sunday service, the camera vividly rendering the huge rococo façade that dwarfs them, as well as the organ itself. No one is seen playing it. At other times it is bells from the church in the Magdalena Contreras village where Rosas was living at the time that are heard, calling to mass (incidentally, the relevant scenes of the 1950 film were shot on location, and the church has since been turned into an arts centre



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bearing the name of Rosas). Thus, throughout the 1932 film, music pervades public, religious, secular and private life. But it is not the music composed by Rosas that is bound to religion, nor born out of an act of submission to institutional authority. The shots with music connected to religion – the organ and the bells – render it heavy, and weighing upon people: the massive organ occupying the upper part of the stone building, the bells larger than the body of the man that rings them. The music Rosas composed – ‘Black Eyes’, ‘Do you Love Me?’, ‘The First Kiss’ and so on, in the film represented by ‘Flores de Margarita’ – is born out of erotic love, in an act of transgression of both class boundaries and the social mores dictated by the Church. This brings us to questions of gender and class in relation to classical music.

Music, gender and class In both films, femininity is aligned with classical music. But while this is highly valued in the first version, since classical music is also aligned with culture and artistic production, in the second version it is derided as classical music is also aligned with inauthenticity, weakness and deceit. In the 1932 version, following the various performances at the salon, conversation revolves around the topic of women, so central to Romantic artists. It has been argued that the Romantic fascination with women can be accounted for by the desire of the illusion of wholeness: according to Simone de Beauvoir, ‘it is in seeking to be made whole through her [his beloved woman] that man hopes to attain self-realization’ (quoted in Bronfen, 1992: 69). With the script at least partly based on the various works of the authors taking part in the salon, director Zacarías has Gamboa propose that women should be understood as ‘open books’, albeit inscrutable ones. Tablada contending women to be ‘toys, in the hands of life’, while Nájera argues they are ‘the glass from where men drink the liquor of inspiration’. Rosas – whose music is nearly always named after a woman – proposes instead that, as aesthetic intuition is a far better route to knowledge than rationality can ever be, no attempt should be made at trying to understand women. And perhaps referring to the Greek muse of music Euterpe, as a woman, perhaps inspired by the various covers of Rosas’s printed music,5 or even by his tombstone, Zacarías has Rosas contend women to be heavenly rather than mortal creatures. Most unusually for a Catholic background, the tombstone features the sculpted torso of a naked woman, from

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her thighs up, with long loose hair not unlike Botticelli’s Venus, reaching out to embrace an open book, presumably printed music. A golden violin rests on the grave itself. This recalls Romantic literature, teeming with eroticism, in which the desire for completeness by means of the body of the beautiful beloved also means the desire for the ultimate ‘completeness’ that death implies (Gil-Curiel, 2011: 174). The 1950 version again follows the conventions established by Hollywood when it comes to representations of musicians in relation to class. Comparative research on American and European musician biopics has shown that whereas in European cinema ‘classical music is on its home territory and […] fundamentally sympathetic to high culture’, American cinema ‘frequently confrontationally juxtaposes high and popular culture’, with popular music representing the democratic and authentic values of the people, whereas classical music is instead associated with elitism (Halfyard, 2006: 73–85). Sobre las Olas 1950 frames this opposition in those very terms, with the added dimension of gender. As mentioned above, Infante’s star image had been established as a witty and mischievous charro macho, singer of the folk ‘ranchera’ music in the rural world of the haciendas, or the popular music, mainly boleros, that he sang in the then contemporary urban melodramas in which he starred. It was thus this folk and popular music as embodied by Infante and his co-stars that had been cinematically equated to the nation and associated with the masculine, while classical music, European in origin, was in this film equated to the foreign, and thus feminized. This dichotomy was also played out in the broader cultural field as a debate between the Party intelligentsia and the group of intellectuals active in the 1920s and 1930s known as ‘los Contemporáneos’,6 mostly in the opposition, who forcefully argued for a refined, Mexican identity based on French values and models, and who rejected the values of revolutionary nationalism as vulgar and crude. They were thus dubbed effeminate, and the word ‘afrancesado’ became for the revolutionaries a derogatory term. This ambivalence towards the role of ‘Europe/high culture’ versus ‘National/popular culture’ is in the film embodied by Rosas’s unrequited love for Dolores, the daughter of a European Ambassador, for whom he composes, plays and sings the waltz thus named, while rejecting her Mexican namesake, daughter of the orchestra conductor, whom nonetheless he is later forced to marry. Although also called Dolores, she is known by the familiar version of the name, ‘Lolita’. Further, in Sobre las Olas, 1950, classical music is what Rosas plays, and he is represented as a thoroughly corrupt character.



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As for class, this is not a source of cleavage in the 1950 film, in which Rosas has no problem entering high society and even meeting the president several times, never feeling out of place or unable to fit in. Unrequited love is the main cause of his misfortunes, and a major drive for the plot. In the 1932 film however, class is paramount. Rosas and Margarita are in love, but it is class difference that stands in the way to resolution by marriage. As a classical musician, Rosas’s social status is ambiguous, at the same time that of a paid servant – an entertainer – and a master of the craft, a genius who holds cultural power in the form of his skills. In his remarkable research on the bowtie – which the Rosas character frequently wears – Rob Shields has framed the classical musicians who wear it within the dialectics of the Master and the Slave. There is a masculine mythology, Shields argues, surrounding the bowtie, which is ‘heavily over-coded with signifiers of both arrogance and enslavement, masculinity and femininity, of both nobility and servitude’ (Shields, 1998: 163). When worn as part of a uniform, it is within the context of a service provider evoking the formal tradition of the manservant’s relation with his aristocratic employer, thus semiotically elevating the customer to the role of Master. Bow-tied classical musicians are servants and masters at the same time, occupying liminal positions. Their higher cultural status puts them above their economic status. They seek membership, but on their own, radical terms. ‘The bowtie signals a surplus of signification […] the wearer should be treated with caution’ (Shields, 1998: 172). As Margarita breaks up her engagement in order to marry Rosas, her rejected boyfriend meets with him and proposes that he should accept his help to set up a business with his brother – thereby equating the work of the classical musician with the manual skills of a tailor, as members of the working class – so that Margarita, who remains his great love and deepest concern, will be able to enjoy the high standard of living she is used to. As a classical musician, Rosas is thus emasculated. His attempts to suit the role of provider by selling his music are fruitless. One publisher offers $17 pesos for ‘Sobre las Olas’, another one $8.7 The scene where the sale takes place is visually highly eloquent, with an extreme close-up of a pair of hands eagerly counting money, followed by another pair of desperate hands that then clutch the coins, almost in a prayer. Hands, which were also crucial to the scenes where the characters fall in love by playing the piano, also feature prominently again in the scenes of the breakup. These are symmetrically staged shots of, first, Rosas and his benefactor and Margarita’s uncle Apolinar, who gently touches his shoulder for consolation for his despair on their separation. And then, this dissolves into

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Apolinar’s hands clutching Margarita’s, crying in her boudoir on learning the news, her body in the same position as Rosas’s but veered towards the opposite side of the screen. Misfortune then quickly befalls the Rosas family. Brother Manuel is killed, presumably at a demonstration since earlier scenes had established him as a fighter for democracy. Soon after, his mother dies too. The last scene sees a sick, lonely Rosas living in the streets, and finding an old friend, Pepe Reyna, by accident. Appalled to see Rosas in such a state, Reyna proposes he come with his orchestra to Cuba. The film ends with the two friends walking together, side by side, into the future. Crucially, Rosas’s alleged alcoholism is in this version omitted, and in his nobility and generosity he emerges as a figure of great dignity and stature. In the 1950 version, despite the script continuously reminding the audience what a national glory Rosas was, with Peralta stressing upon their performance that they are performing for Mexico, and Díaz telling his dinner guests they will hear the most gifted genius in the country and one who can rival with European performers, the way the story is visually and audibly narrated makes these assertions rather difficult to believe.

Conclusion These films provide totally different versions of the life and times of Juventino Rosas, according to their own historical context and the circumstances of their production. As expected, they drew selectively from received biographies, and took considerable ‘artistic licence’ with the parts that were emphasized, suppressed or elaborated. Rosas comes across as two different persons. The first film both reflects and contributes to the consensus that emerged shortly after the revolution. In its sober homage to Rosas and classical music, narratives of national identity are bound to a common culture, unambiguously introduced as valuable. The second film is a fraught and contrived battlefield in which the counter-revolutionary state, the Catholic Church and Infante’s managers fight for the meaning of post-revolutionary Mexican history, the definition of art and culture and of national identity, as well as for the development of the national entertainment industries, their star-system, and their careers. Classical music is accordingly deployed in remarkably different ways. In the first film, it is the revered protagonist. In the second, it comes across almost as a tagged-on nuisance.



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Most tragic is perhaps that both films were seeking in Rosas a Third-World intellectual as defined by Gilles Deleuze in his discussion of minor cinema as one ‘who has to break with the condition of the colonized but can do so only by going over to the colonizer’s side, even if only aesthetically, through artistic influences’ (Deleuze, 2009: 213). In other words, what made Rosas valuable was his ability to compose and play European classical music. The 1950 film even makes an alleged accusation of plagiarism on the basis of racism (although peripheral to the plot), arguing that this was what prompted Rosas into selfexile, and adding a legend at the end explaining that ‘Mexico’ sought to set the record straight on this matter with that film. The whole dignity of the nation depended on Western acknowledgement of the possibility of an indigenous musician composing Romantic pieces that could have been attributed to Strauss. And while the 1932 version did not embed these claims in the plot, the context of its reception certainly made it clear that what made the film good – if not Rosas’s music – was its quality, again, on a par with the cinema of the colonizers. All seventeen critical pieces written between 23 April and 27 May 1933 following Sobre las Olas’s opening night published in the most important newspapers at the time, El Universal and Excélsior, unanimously praise the film for being ‘a completely Mexican Story’, and a ‘wholly national film’, but above all for being ‘one that can rival with foreign productions’ (Excélsior, 1933) and ‘perfectly demonstrates how the national industry is capable of dealing with all the modern genres available for the big screen’ (L., 1933).8 The result was that far from putting cinema to the service of the creation of the people to come, they put it ‘before a people which, from the point of view of culture, is doubly colonized: colonized by stories that have come from elsewhere, but also by their own myths [which] become impersonal entities at the service of the colonizer’ (Deleuze, 2009: 13).

Notes 1 Most of Rosas’s biographies were written soon after his death, on the basis of interviews with family and friends. In 1969, the Director of the Historical Archives of Guanajuato, Jesús Rodríguez Frausto, wrote what remains the most authoritative account of Rosas’s life, drawing from extensive primary sources in the archive as well as the previous interviews. In 1994, Hugo Barreiro Lastra completed that work with a thorough account of the life of Rosas in Cuba, and also worth mentioning for

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2

3

4 5

6 7

8

Film Music in ‘Minor’ National Cinemas the catalogue of works included, as well as for the iconography, is Helmut Brenner’s Juventino Rosas: His Life, His Work, His Time (2000). IMDB lists ‘Sobre las Olas’ as having been used in about 200 films made between 1931 and 2012, among these, Tristram Shandy (dir: Winterbottom, 2005), Heavenly Creatures (dir: Jackson, 1994), Mary Poppins (dir: Stevenson, 1964) and Sunset Boulevard (dir: Wilder, 1950). He argued for three types of rhythm, each corresponding to a different mode of knowledge: the atomic level of mechanical movement, corresponding to science; the level of living matter, where movement has a purpose and originates from oneself, corresponding to the field of ethics; and the level of the soul, characterized by creativity as in the aesthetic act, encompassing disinterested action (Vasconcelos, 1997 [1925]: xxv). The jacket of the DVD currently available (2014) wrongly states Rosas plagiarized the piece. In the nineteenth century, the vast majority of scores bore ‘a picture of a woman on their cover, and in hundreds of cases, also featured a lady’s first name. The musical score therefore became virtually synonymous with the señorita in nineteenth century Mexico’ (Miranda, 2010: 68). The members of the group were José Gorostiza, Carlos Pellicer, Bernardo Ortiz de Montellano, Enrique González Rojo and Jaime Torres Bodet. In fact the Rosas archive holds a receipt from publishers Wagner and Levien for $45 for this and another piece Lazos de Amor/Bonds of Love, dated 1888, presumably equivalent to $8 in 1932. My translation.

References Agrasanchez, R. (2011) Mexican Movies in the United States: A History of the Films, Theatres and Audiences 1920–1960. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Bakhtin, M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press. Barreiro Lastra, H. (1994) Los Días Cubanos de Juventino Rosas. Guanajuato: Gobierno del Estado de Guanajuato. Belifiore, E. and O. Bennett (2010) The Social Impact of the Arts: an Intellectual History. London: Palgrave. Brennan, J. A. (2000) ‘La Música Cinematográfica en México’, in R. Aviña (ed.) Cinémas d’Amérique Latine. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail: 20–6. Brenner, H. (2000) Juventino Rosas: His Life, His Works, His Time. Warren: Harmonie Park Press. Bronfen, E. (1992) Over Her Dead Body. Manchester: Manchester University Press.



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Codell, J. F. (2014) ‘Gender, Genius and Abjection in Artist Biopics’, in T. Brown and B. Vidal (eds) The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture. New York: Routledge: 159–75. Custen, G. F. (2001) ‘Making History’, in M. Landy (ed.) The Historical Film: History and Memory in Media. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press: 67–97. Deleuze, G. (2009) Cinema 2, trans. H. Tomlinson and R. Galeta. London: Continuum. Dickinson, K. (2003) ‘Introduction’, in K. Dickinson (ed.) Movie Music: The Film Reader. London: Routledge: 1–11. D’Lugo, M. (2010) ‘Aural Identity and Hispanic Transnationality’, in N. Durovicova and K. Newman (eds) World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives. London: Routledge: 160–85. Excélsior (1933, May 7) ‘ “Sobre las Olas” es una película de Arte, que glorifica dignamente la memoria de Juventino Rosas’. Excélsior: n.p. Florescano, E. (2005) Imágenes de la Patria a Través de los Siglos. Mexico City: Taurus. García Riera, E. (1969) Historia Documental del Cine Mexicano. Mexico: Era. Gil-Curiel, G. (2011) A Comparative Approach: The Early European Supernatural Tale. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Halfyard, J. K. (2006) ‘Screen Playing: Cinematic Representations of Classical Music Performance and European Identity’, in M. Mera and D. Burnand (eds), European Film Music. Aldershot: Ashgate: 73–85. Hart, S. M. (2004) Introduction to Latin American Film. Rochester, NY: Tamesis. Higgins, C. (2008) Gabriel Figueroa: Nuevas Perspectivas. Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes. L., L. d. (1933, 13 May) ‘Sobre las Olas Palacio’. El Universal: n.p. López Tarso, I. (2013, 26 August) ‘Con Talento se Puede Competir Contra Hollywood: López Tarso’. El Universal: n.p. Minna Stern, A. (2003) ‘From Mestizophilia to Biotypology: Racialization and Science in Mexico, 1920–1960’, in N. P. Appelbaum, K. A. Rosemblatt and P. Wade (eds) Race and Nation in Modern Latin America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina: 187–210. Miranda, R. (2010) ‘The Standards of Seduction’. Artes de México (March): 67–71. Miranda, R. and V. Quirarte (2010) ‘Nineteenth Century Music: Frozen Amber’. Artes de México: Música de la Independencia a la Revolución 97: 45. Monsiváis, C. (2009) Pedro Infante: Las Leyes del Querer. Mexico City: Aguilar. Parakilas, J. (2002) ‘Introduction’, in J. Parakilas (ed.) Piano Roles: Three Hundred Years of Life with the Piano. New Haven: Yale University Press: 1–6. Ramírez-Berg, C. (1992) Cinema of Solitude: a Critical Study of Mexican Films 1967–1983. Austin: University of Texas Press. Shields, R. (1998) ‘A Tale of Three Louis: Ambiguity, Masculinity and the Bowtie’, in A. Brydon and S. Niessen (eds) Consuming Fashion: Adorning the Transnational Body. Oxford: Berg: 163–75.

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Smith, A. D. (2004) The Antiquity of Nations. Cambridge: Polity. Tibbetts, J. C. (2005) Composers in the Movies: Studies in Musical Biography. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Vasconcelos, J. (1997 [1925]) The Cosmic Race, trans. D. T. Jaén. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

4

Black Orpheus Hans Hess

University of Bristol, UK

Orfeu Negro (Camus, 1959) is regarded as key for Brazilian cinema for bringing bossa nova, samba and a romantic portrayal of the shantytowns of Rio de Janeiro to the world, despite being a French production. As samba/bossa nova is a crucial aspect of this film, there are two contending interpretations as to its meaning in the soundtrack. One regards it as truly innovative and a means for the expression of national identity, combining multiple cultural expressions such as samba/bossa nova and shantytowns, while selectively and creatively drawing from Greek mythology, thus fitting what Deleuze would have called an instance of ‘minor’ cinema, despite its European director. The other regards it as counter to the world it seeks to depict, in fact actually working against the representation of happy shantytown dwellers (favelados) and depicting hardship, refuge, solace and love in the life of Afro-Brazilians. Here I provide a background to the way this film has been traditionally understood. I then examine the main scenes where samba/bossa nova is played, and after careful analysis of the music and lyrics, with its socio-cultural connotations and subtexts, I conclude that although both interpretations are plausible, in its moving depiction of Afro-Brazilians as artists, Orfeu Negro can be considered an instance of minor cinema: a liberating cinema, free of the colonizer’s expectations and one of the multifaceted expressions of Brazilian identity.

Background Orfeu Negro [Black Orpheus] (dir: Camus, 1959) is not a Brazilian production, but a French one, directed by Marcel Camus and distributed by Lopert Pictures. But the film has had a huge influence on the construction of Brazil’s

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image abroad, and fifty years after its release it is still an important point of reference for discussions of the perceptions of Brazil in other countries. More non-Brazilians have seen Black Orpheus than any other film set in Brazil. The film has provided an introduction to Brazilian culture to more Europeans and North Americans than any other artwork. And the worldwide success of Black Orpheus put Brazilian popular culture, and especially music, on the world map (Perrone, 2001: 46–7). The film is based on the rich symbolic legacy of the Orpheus myth. Orpheus embodies both a regal character and the essence of musicality. Orpheus stands for the ultimate power of music that can even modify nature, or the limitations of musical enlightenment when facing the challenges of love. He was both a shaman and a magician, but above all a unique musician. He could alter the course of nature with his singing and lyre playing. Orpheus’ wife, Eurydice, dies from a snake bite soon after their marriage. He tries to console himself by playing music in the valleys, but eventually cannot put up with his grief any more and decides to descend to the underworld to search for Eurydice. Orpheus begs Pluto and the keepers of Hades to allow him to take Eurydice back to the world of the living and convinces them, under one condition: Orpheus should not look back to see if Eurydice is following until their ascent is complete, otherwise he loses her forever. Orpheus cannot resist and looks back to see if Eurydice is there, and indeed Eurydice is lost to him. Once Orpheus is back in the world of the living, he avoids women, which infuriates the Maenads or Bacchants, the female followers of Dionysius, who kill him and tear his body to pieces by a river. His head floats downstream singing and making prophecies, while his lyre keeps on sounding. In this way, the legend depicts the permanence of music. In Western cultural tradition, Orpheus became a symbol of music, and in the seventeenth century, an opera, Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (1607) was, in the long run, by far the most influential of the early operas (Perrone, 2001: 49). The film is based on this myth. Orpheus’ tragic loss of his beloved Eurydice happens during carnival in a black shantytown and in the streets of Rio de Janeiro. The film established a strong association between Brazil, blackness and carnival. The play written by Vinícius de Moraes for his Orfeu da Conceição (Orpheus from Conception) (1953) served as the basis for Marcel Camus’ adaptation. Both the film and the play address issues of race (Perrone, 2001: 48). Vinícius de Moraes’ play Orfeu da Conceição was based on his own literary and musical influences. In 1942, Vinícius de Moraes was reading an



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eighteenth-century version of the Orpheus legend by Italian librettist Ranieri de Calzabigi, a version later set to music by Christoph Willibald Gluck, and had travelled with North American literary critic Frank Waldo around Brazil. While they were in Rio, Frank asked Vinícius de Moraes to take him to the favelas (shantytowns), where the American was amazed by the beautiful dancing and music-making of the favelados: ‘They look,’ he told de Moraes, ‘like Greeks.’ Later on, having read the Calzabigi version of the Orpheus story, Vinícius de Moraes began to write, partially inspired by the coincidence of hearing a batacuda while he was writing about Orpheus.1 De Moraes saw Afro-Brazilian performance as bringing the Dionysian dimension to an Apollonian theme, calling the play, in his words: ‘a homage to blacks for their organic contribution to the culture of this country and for their impassioned life style’ (Stam, 2004 [1997]: 167–8). The play Orfeu da Conceição used a cast only of black people, and the talents of other production artists such as designer-architect Oscar Niemeyer, Carlos Scliar as visual adviser, and composer Antônio Carlos Jobim, who wrote the score and the music for the songs (Perrone, 2001: 50). According to Charles Perrone, Camus did not mean to make social statements in Black Orpheus. But to re-cast one of the most famous myths of Greek antiquity as a story set in the favelas of Rio is a social statement in itself, and Camus’ direction displayed a vast majority of marginalized Afro-Brazilians living in the shantytowns (favelas) during the 1957 carnival parade in Rio de Janeiro. The festive practices and musical expressions are shown from start to finish, and the plot is developed during the final preparations for the official beginning of carnival. The protagonist is a trolley-car conductor, singersongwriter and leader of a small samba school in a favela that overlooks the city proper. Orpheus is engaged to the stunning Mira, but he falls in love with a visitor from the countryside, Eurydice, whose eventual fatal misfortune in the midst of the revelry is due to a mistake of his. From this point on, the story comprises his attempts at recovering Eurydice. The jealous rage of Mira leads to the death of Orpheus back in the favela on the verge of sunrise. In the final scene, an enthusiastic young boy plays Orpheus’ guitar, as his friend and a young girl dance with joy (Perrone, 2001: 51). In Brazil, Black Orpheus had a widely negative reception. The main reason was that the film was very different from the original play by Vinícius de Moraes.2 Many Brazilians considered the film as being overly ‘exotic’ and selling a cliché of Brazil with its stereotype of carnival, dance, rhythm, music, colour and laughter, for a European audience. Brazilian composer Caetano

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Veloso expressed his negative reaction to the film in his book Verdade Tropical (Tropical Truth): The whole audience and I laughed and were ashamed of the bold inauthenticity that the French filmmaker allowed himself in order to create a product of fascinating exoticism. The criticism that we Brazilians made of the film can be summarized this way: How is it possible that the best and most genuine Brazilian musicians should have accepted to create masterpieces to adorn (and dignify) such deceit? (Veloso, 1977: 252)

Director Carlos Diegues, who later made another film version of the story called Orfeu (1999), said that what he really dislikes about Camus’ film was the depiction of the favela as a ‘paradise’, an idyllic place, where only death is bothersome. Diegues also believes that the international popularity of the film relied on Cold War viewers in the United States who were pleased to see something happy and utopian.3 Perrone also thinks that Black Orpheus’ international success was due to Carmen Miranda, an exceptional performer who had international success on stage and on film. However, Brazilians considered her act vulgar or exotic. As Caetano Veloso states in his article: We had discovered that she was both our caricature and x ray, and we began to take notice of the destiny of that woman: she was a typical girl from Rio, born in Portugal, who, using blatantly vulgar though elegant stylization of the clothes characteristic of baiana (woman from Bahia), had conquered the world and become the highest-paid woman entertainer in the United States. (Veloso cited in Perrone, 2001: 41)

Perrone also points out that apart from aesthetic and ideological questions, criticism of Black Orpheus involved exploitation issues related to performance and music. The black people who staged an out-of-season carnival for Camus’s cameras did not receive any pay, and the composer-lyricist team (Antônio Carlos Jobim/Vinícius de Moraes) got only 10 per cent on songs that proved to be extremely successful, while the producer Sacha Gordine had all the rights to publish the music and claim half the revenue (Perrone, 2001: 51–2). Despite the criticism, Robert Stam claims that Black Orpheus has an enduring charm, for three reasons. First, the film builds on a myth whose power is rooted in the Western fascination with love and death, a love that encounters obstacles and which can be fulfilled only beyond the grave. The West, according to him, has always been fascinated by death-haunted love. The film’s masked figure of



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death betokens this interest, as does the penultimate image, the dead lovers cradled in each other’s arms. This liebestod theme touches a familiar chord in Western art: the same chord struck by works as diverse as Romeo and Juliet, Wuthering Heights and Love Story, just as the final shots of the rising sun suggest the archetype of death and resurrection. Second, the film takes advantage of the spectacular beauty of Rio de Janeiro itself. The urban topography, in conjunction with colourful carnival costumes, turns the film into a visual spectacle. Moreover, Camus transcended conventional Hollywood representations of Latin America and created a sympathetic portrait of Brazil and of Black Brazilians. The Afro-Brazilians in the film are overwhelmingly likeable, sympathetic and creative in their everyday lives. Everything that happens in the film, including carnival, is presented as if spontaneous, giving a European or North American audience a sense of a carefree tropical ‘other’ playing out a more gratifying life. The third reason that accounts for the charm of Black Orpheus is the pulsating energy of carnival itself, as one of the biggest expressions of popular creativity in the world. Carnival is a veritable folk opera, mingling music, narrative, dance, poetry and costumes. Black Orpheus introduced both samba and bossa nova to the world, and started a second samba wave – the first having originated with Miranda. For instance, the song ‘Manhã de Carnaval’ was recorded over 700 times in the United States, and the songs of Tom Jobim and Luiz Bonfá are now among the most widely played in the history of world music. Black Orpheus did more than any other film to make carnival the symbol of Brazil itself and Camus should be given credit for emphasizing the blackness not only of Rio’s carnival but also of Brazil. In choosing a film about the god of music to tell a Brazilian story, Camus did ‘strike a chord’ about Brazilian identity by depicting the effortless musical manifestation of the country.

The soundtrack The original songs from Orfeu da Conceição were not used in the film. The French producer Sacha Gordine did not want to pay for music royalties, so he commissioned new compositions in order to be able to publish the songs separately and earn royalties (Perrone, 2001: 52–3).4 The music is one of the most important features of Black Orpheus, and it is almost non-stop. It is either non-diegetic music, or, music we see being made, or, music we only hear but do not see, which includes music we understand

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or assume to be implicitly diegetic, as when we can assume that musicians are rehearsing in the favela, in many of the scenes of Orpheus talking to Eurydice. The music pervades the different levels of narration in the film in the same way in which it pervades the lives of the protagonists, making the form of the film part of its programme of ‘selling’ the music as an authentic and ubiquitous expression of Brazilian life. The three basic types of music we hear in the film are: (1) batucada – percussion sessions with typical Brazilian membranophones and idiophones (e.g. pandeiro,5 reco-reco,6 agogô,7 cuíca8) in groups of varying size; (2) instrumental cues; and (3) songs, usually with an individual voice. There are five compositions used in the film: ‘A Felicidade’, by Antônio Carlos Jobim-Vinícius de Moraes; ‘Frevo’, instrumental, by Jobim; ‘O Nosso Amor’ by Jobim-Moraes; ‘Manhã de Carnaval’ by Luiz Bonfá-Antônio Maria; and ‘Samba de Orfeu’, instrumental by Bonfá. Although Black Orpheus foregrounds the idea of carnival, samba, and an ‘idyllic life’ of Afro-Brazilians in the northern part of Rio de Janeiro, the songs used in the film that became popular worldwide belong to a music genre that comes from the middle-class society in the beachfront southern zone of the city: bossa nova. The diegetic and non-diegetic use of the bossa nova songs was ‘mashed up’ with the diegetic samba and batucadas9 throughout the film, making it harder, especially for a foreign audience, to differentiate between the fundamentally Afro-Brazilian samba rooted in carnival, and the emergent style that the film helped to disseminate.

Bossa Nova versus Samba By the end of the 1950s, the white middle classes from the southern zone (zona sul) of Rio de Janeiro were looking for a new way of playing samba. They complained about the Americanization of Brazilian music and the hybrid forms that samba had taken since the 1930s and 1940s. Ironically, their solution was to use jazz and classical music influences blended with samba syncopated rhythms. The goal of these musicians was to give a different insight of samba. Hence, bossa nova could be interpreted as a different type of samba whose creators did not live in the northern zone, but were nonetheless influenced by Afro-Brazilian music from that part of Rio de Janeiro. By contrast, Tinhorão sees bossa nova as a manifestation from the white middle class that distanced itself from the traditional Afro-Brazilian folk origins. Bossa



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nova middle-class white musicians experienced a different economic reality than that of most Afro-Brazilians and samba composers from the favelas. Thus, Tinhorão believes that Brazilian urban popular music such as samba evolved according to the socio-economic situation of the different people involved. For instance, the lower classes of Brazilian society would carry on developing traditional rural music such as samba, frevo, toadas, marchas and many others. As the socio-economic situation of these classes never substantially changed, their leisure time did not change either, so the music was directed to carnival and its needs of lyricism and sentimentalism, or even drama, to express the pressures of the socioeconomic system (Tinhorão, 1974: 227). Nei Lopes has a similar view about bossa nova, believing that all African richness was lost and the polyrhythm of samba was diluted. Nei Lopes sees this as a consequence of the globalization process in music, which, in his view, tries to stereotype everything into popular music and consequently undermines a different music culture, such as the African (Ribeiro, 2005: 99–101, referring to Nei Lopes interview on 1 December 2000). The views of Caetano Veloso that Brazilian popular music is in a constant development that draws from a wide and diverse range of internal and external influences should be considered. For him, the bossa nova movement epitomized the essence of the continuation of what he termed the ‘evolutionary line’ (linha evolutiva) of Brazilian popular music. The Tropicália movement’s goal was to forge a ‘universal sound’ from all of its sources of influence, whether foreign or national (Stroud, 2008: 28). This reiterates the idea that we can see bossa nova in the soundtrack of Black Orpheus as a samba that has been reinvented with foreign music genres and Afro-Brazilian music, or as David Treece states, as a contemporary reinterpretation of the samba tradition: […] profoundly rooted in its sense of spirituality, its cyclical, repetitive structures, its polyrhythmic approach to musical time and the interplay of language and melody, but combining these with modern concepts of melodic chromaticism, harmonic modulation and minimalist performative attitude that together tend towards a more contemplative, reflective commentary on the experimental present, the unfolding of time in the here and now. (Treece, 2013: 171)

Samba lírico-amoroso I shall use one of the three samba genres proposed by Cláudia Matos to analyse the songs used in the soundtrack: samba lírico-amoroso, the lyrical and amorous

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samba (1982: 39–45).10 A definition of this samba genre is important in order to understand its socio-cultural connotations and possible interpretations when used in the context of film. During the 1960s, in the samba lírico-amoroso, composers were searching for a more lyrical and romantic expression, especially with regard to sambas about love (Matos, 1982: 39–45). The principal themes of the samba lírico-amoroso: ‘love’ and ‘woman’, were approached with sadness and pessimism, mixed with idealism and fatalism. The idealism that the sambista11 projects on the beloved woman that he desires, but is impossible to reach, can be compared to his lowerclass condition and aspirations of ascending in the social ladder, being always oppressed and dominated by its rules, political and economic powers (Matos, 1982: 46–7). Composers such as Cartola, Nelson Cavaquinho, Zé Keti and Lupicínio Rodrigues are examples of this romantic samba. The theme of love in samba is so strong that for Moura it seems to be an expression of the spirit of the community that is cultivated in a roda de samba,12 rather than the competitive and progressive environment of samba that is more common in school parading for carnival (Moura, 2004: 66). Here is an example of samba and a bossa nova song that share similar lyric characteristics with the samba lírico-amoroso:

‘Diz Que Fui Por Aí’ by Zé Keti13 (…) Mas só depois que a saudade se afastar de mim Só depois que a saudade se afastar de mim Tenho um violão, p’ra me acompanhar Tenho muitos amigos, eu sou popular Tenho a madrugada, como companheira A saudade me dói, o meu peito rói

‘Say That I Went There’ by Zé Keti14 (…) But only after longing is away from me Only after longing is away from me I’ve got a guitar, to accompany me I’ve got many friends, I’m popular I’ve got the dawn, as my companionship



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The longing hurts me, my chest gnaws

‘Chega de Saudade’ by Tom Jobim15 Vai, minha tristeza E diz a ela que sem ela não pode ser Diz lhe numa prece que ela regresse Porque eu não posso mais sofrer Chega de saudade, a realidade É que sem ela não há paz, não há beleza É só tristeza, e a melancolia Que não sai de mim, não sai de mim, não sai Mas se ela voltar, se ela voltar Que coisa linda, que coisa louca (…)

‘Enough Missing Her’ by Tom Jobim Go, my sadness And tell her that without her it can’t be Tell her in a prayer To come back, because I can’t suffer anymore Enough missing her The reality is that without her there’s no peace, there’s no beauty It’s only sadness and melancholy That won’t leave me, won’t leave me, won’t leave me But if she comes back, if she comes back What a beautiful thing, what a crazy thing (…) Sambistas from this genre drew inspiration from Brazilian poets such as Olavo Bilac, Castro Alves and Gonçalves Dias, bringing a white influence through highly metaphorical lyrics full of idealization, melancholy and escapism that marked their world view. This gave samba considerable musical and poetic value, approaching life situations and emotions considered universal, such as love, sadness, longing, dreams, or hardship, in new, creative ways. To Matos, because sambistas were exploring the theme of love and longing, known in Portuguese as saudade,16 their cultural individuality was not exposed enough to

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other social classes to create awareness about the life of Afro-Brazilians. Thus, woman in the lyrical and amorous samba can be interpreted as a dominant and oppressive power towards the sambista, as if projecting the same dominant and oppressive powers that politics and economic powers have on sambistas (1982: 46–7). It is tempting to make an analogy between this fatalist love in the samba lírico-amoroso and troubadour poetry. The predominant theme for troubadours was love. Troubadours were the first lyric poets in medieval Europe to deal exhaustively with this subject, and the majority of ladies that the troubadours praised were married. Besides, the troubadour love was constituted upon the analogy of feudal relationship, where the lover stood to his lady in a position analogous to that of the vassal to his overlord. The troubadour’s passion for his lady transforms his nature, i.e. he is stronger and a better person, ready to forgive enemies: winter is to him as the cheerful spring. However, he loses his self-control, does not hear when he is addressed, cannot eat or sleep, grows thin and feeble, and is sinking slowly to an early tomb. Even so, he does not regret his love, though it leads to suffering and death; his passion grows ever stronger for it is ever supported by hope (Chaytor, 1912: 14–18). Moreover, the use of literature from the white middle class as an inspiration for these samba composers can be seen as a cultural invasion from the same dominant and oppressive powers. As can be seen in the example above, the bossa nova song ‘Chega de Saudade’ approaches the theme of love for a woman in the same way. Not being with his beloved deprived the singer from all happiness and joy in life, giving woman, once again, a position of dominance.

Is bossa nova a contemporary samba? My contention is that if we interpret bossa nova as a contemporary type of samba, the use of the songs in the soundtrack influences how Black Orpheus depicts and interprets hardship, refuge and solace in the life of Afro-Brazilians, as well as the themes of fatalism and pessimism in love related to the samba lírico-amoroso. If, on the contrary, bossa nova is seen as a corruption of ‘authentic’ samba, the soundtrack seems to put bossa nova in a position of ‘invader’ to the world of samba.



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Methodology The analysis of the soundtrack is divided into three sections. First, the scene will be described and contextualized. Second, the songs of the scene will be described in detail. Last, the music and lyrics will be discussed with regard to the socio-cultural connotations and subtexts they provide for the film or in conjunction with the story, the images and dialogues. The scenes selected for a closer look are related to the use of original songs composed by Luís Bonfá and Tom Jobim. The songs ‘A Felicidade’ (Felicity) and ‘Samba De Orfeu’ [Orpheus’s Samba] depict how samba music can be seen as solace and refuge for Afro-Brazilians who suffer from hardship and poverty. The songs ‘Manhã de Carnaval’ (Carnival Morning), as well as ‘A Felicidade’, explore the love story of Orpheus and Eurydice and its relation to the samba lírico-amoroso.

Orfeu Negro, DVD chapter 7, time code: 00:25:11 The use of romantic and poetic lyrics in ‘Manhã de Carnaval’ and ‘A Felicidade’ to express Orpheus’s love for Eurydice is an example of the samba líricoamoroso tradition. These scenes can also be interpreted as a demonstration of the ‘invasion’ to the (Afro-Brazilian) world of samba by the use of these bossa nova songs. This scene will look at possible interpretations when two pieces of diegetic music are used simultaneously. Orpheus gets home from work with his guitar. We can hear batacuda being played as diegetic music coming from the surrounding areas of his house. The favela is in preparation for carnival, so samba is being constantly played within the community. This batacuda carries on for the whole scene, while other events take place, with music too. Orpheus starts to play when two boys, Benedito and Zeca, come to him and ask if he can make the sun rise by playing the guitar. Orpheus says he can, and one of the boys wants to try it by himself. Orpheus refuses by showing that the guitar has only one master. On the body of the guitar is written, ‘Orpheus Is My Master’. The children are surprised, but show respect. However, Orpheus is willing to show them his new composition, and he starts to play ‘Manhã de Carnaval’ by Brazilian composer Luiz Bonfá:

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‘Manhã de Carnaval’17 Manhã, tão bonita manhã Na vida, uma nova canção Cantando só teus olhos Teu riso, tuas mãos Pois há de haver um dia Em que virás (…)

Morning of Carnaval18 Morning, such beautiful morning A new song in life Singing only of your eyes Your smile, your hands For there will be a day when you come

Figure 5  Orfeu singing ‘Manhã de Carnaval’. Orfeu, dir: Marcel Camus (Dispat Films/Tupan Filmes, 1959)



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(…) While Orpheus is singing ‘Manhã de Carnaval’, Eurydice comes to her cousin’s house, next to Orpheus’s. She can hear Orpheus singing from her cousin’s house, so she starts to dance, happily. Orpheus is a very famous musician in the favela, and very popular among women too. Some of them hear him play, and go to his house to investigate. Orpheus has to stop his serenade as he hears the other two women approaching. He gives his guitar to the two boys and flees to Serafina’s (Eurydice’s cousin) house, finding Eurydice by accident. He recognizes her and they start a conversation. The lyrics of this bossa nova song provide an eloquent idealization of love, closer to the literate Brazilian white culture, which shares the same poetic influence in the lyrics of the samba lírico-amoroso. Hence, we could say that here, Orpheus, as a sambista, is allowing the bossa nova genre to influence and come to the world of samba. It is the fashionable white samba of bossa nova entering in the Afro-Brazilian community of the favelas. While Orpheus and Eurydice are talking, we hear one of the boys playing the theme song ‘Manhã de Carnaval’ in the background, while the batacuda samba music from the favela is still being played, resulting in two strands of diegetic music being played simultaneously – a seeming accident of different things happening at the same time in the diegesis, but easily interpreted in the context of the film: the constant batacuda samba can be seen to represent the culture of the Afro-descendants from the favelas. External social and cultural reality is not allowed in, and the community is socially unified, and acts out that unity in music. ‘Manhã de Carnaval’, on the other hand, and despite its reference to the most extrovert celebration of Afro-Brazilian culture, is related to Eurydice and represents a poetic version of love that invades the samba world with its eloquence and its metaphors coming from literate white culture. Moreover, as mentioned above, ‘Manhã de Carnaval’ is a bossa nova song, which can be understood as conflicting with the Afro-Brazilian batacada samba that we are hearing in the background, as if black and white samba were confronting each other. Eurydice herself, although she is a black woman, can also be considered an invader. She came from outside Rio de Janeiro to seek refuge with her cousin as she claims that there is a man who wants to kill her, so she also brings things ‘out there’19 to the favela. Orpheus is in love with Eurydice. He puts his ladies’ man and malandro20 behaviour aside to adopt a romantic personality to conquer his beloved woman. He says that they are meant to love each other

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as their names are related to the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The woman from the outside world and the high-culture reference of their names make Orpheus shift his allegiance from favela culture to the more ‘cultured’ bossa nova song ‘Manhã de Carnaval’. Orpheus is so focused on this song and his love for Eurydice that he seems not to be aware of the diegetic samba in the background, which can be interpreted as a disconnection from his own community. Perrone points out that when Orpheus addresses Eurydice, he blends excerpts from the lyrics into his speech, a vague explanation of the love story of the mythical couple. Taken with emotion, she says she remembers the words of the song but that it was the melody she liked. This emphasis on what the Greeks called melopoeia functions narratively, as she is deflecting his advances at this early point by diverting attention away from the amorous lyrics. Her comment further underscores the enchantment of the sound that transcends words, and connects the moment with the film’s final song, ‘Samba de Orfeu’. We only hear half of the lyrics of the original composition, which literally correlates to the storyline as an anticipation of the new love of the couple on the upcoming morning of carnival. When Orpheus serenades Eurydice, we listen to the second bridge of ‘A Felicidade’, which contains the most relevant amorous section of the lyrics (Perrone, 2001: 55):

‘A Felicidade’ by Tom Jobim, lyrics by Vinícius de Moraes21 (…) A minha felicidade está sonhando Nos olhos da minha namorada É como está noite passando passando Em busca da madrugada (…)

‘Felicity’ by Tom Jobim, lyrics by Vinícius de Moraes22 (…) My happiness is dreaming Of the eye of my girlfriend It’s like this night passing, passing In search of dawn (…)



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The lyrics match the scene, as Eurydice slowly wakes up by Orpheus’s serenade singing that ‘happiness is dreaming of the eyes of my girlfriend’. Once again, poetic and romantic lyrics from a bossa nova song are used by the sambista to express his love for the beloved woman. It can thus be suggested that Orpheus is neglecting his malandragem23 by adopting the romantic and fatalist profile that is again related to the white middle-class literatures that influenced samba lírico-amoroso, making him overpowered by his beloved woman and by external music influences such as bossa nova.

Orfeu Negro, DVD chapter 1, time code 00:00:00 This scene allows for a different interpretation of the lyrics of the song ‘A Felicidade’, showing carnival and samba as solace and refuge for Afro-Brazilians and their hardship status. The film’s title Black Orpheus is shown on screen, along with the first notes of ‘A Felicidade’. The music is interrupted abruptly, and we start to hear samba as diegetic music performed by the people from the morros24 in Rio de Janeiro.25 The classic image of Orpheus and Eurydice is shattered and replaced by images of shantytowns, and the shock transition between the first six notes of ‘A Felicidade’ to the diegetic samba can be understood in the following way. The first notes of the song ‘A Felicidade’ begin to dramatize the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, because the lyrics they relate to can be understood as a comment on the story that is about to unfold: Tristeza não tem fim, felicidade sim – ‘Sadness has no end, Happiness does’ (lyrics below). The abrupt change to the images of the favelas sets up the location where the adaptation of this Greek myth will take place, which suggests a contemporary version of the story. While the scene clearly shows the poverty that favela dwellers live in, they seem to be not bothered about it as they are happily dancing and singing samba, which can be interpreted as an amusement, a lark, a moment of playful escapism for the Afro-Brazilians. The images from c. 0:50 to c. 1:10 show downtown Rio far below the samba dancers, making the point in a very clear way that there are two social worlds in the city. In the urban area of Rio de Janeiro, their job is not well paid, they are discriminated against and they struggle to climb the social ladder. Nevertheless, they still have samba, a key element of their cultural and social identity in the community of the shantytowns, something that brings people together in the act of shared performance. Thus, boundaries are created between the city and the shantytowns.

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The diegetic samba continues to play alongside the non-diegetic theme tune for the film A Felicidade. The lyrics of this song act as if it is supporting the ideals of the diegetic samba, by putting into words what Afro-Brazilians are trying to express through the instrumental samba. One of the verses of the song’s lyrics addresses the illusion that carnival and samba bring to the poor people of the favelas:

‘Felicity’ by Tom Jobim26 The happiness of the poor seems To be the grand illusion of carnival People work the whole year long To dream for a moment To make the costume of A king, a pirate, a gardener For all to be over on (Ash) Wednesday Sadness has no end Happiness does. After a year of hard work, poor people from the shantytowns will have their moment of glory only when they wear a fancy dress of something that they dream of but they cannot become a king, a pirate, a gardener. The daily hardship of their lives is a harsh reality, but samba and carnival with its fantasy and utopian world alleviate this. During the four days of carnival there is no work, and the event is governed by the idea that all social classes are at the same social level for the festivities. Carnival is founded on the ambivalence of reality aiming to ‘profane the sacred’ and the interactions of all opposites, with a temporary inversion of power and order: a reversible ‘crowning’ and ‘uncrowning’ of power (Matos, 1982: 49). However, such enchantment is broken on Ash Wednesday, which brings reality back, ends their happiness, and their sadness recommences.

Orfeu Negro, DVD chapter 17, time code 01:45:15 The song ‘Samba de Orfeu’ once again uses samba as a depiction of refuge and solace for the favela community. Benedito runs desperately with Orpheus’s guitar because he wants Zeca to play it so that the sun can rise. Zeca hesitates several times, as he believes that he cannot play it. Benedito insists, and Zeca finally starts playing the instrumental version of ‘Samba de Orfeu’ [Orpheus’s



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Samba], another song by Brazilian composer Luiz Bonfá. A little girl approaches, asking what Zeca is doing, and Benedito promptly answers that Zeca is making the sun rise by playing the guitar. We can see the sunshine getting brighter on their faces, and when Zeca finally plays the last chord the sun shines fully. They are so fascinated by that achievement that Benedito says that Zeca is Orpheus now, as he was able to make the sun rise. Zeca denies this, but the little girl confirms that he is like Orpheus and gives him a flower. She asks Zeca to play the guitar for her, and Zeca carries on playing the tune and all of them start to dance, to celebrate their joy. The importance of samba music-making as self-performance and selfexpression of the favela community is shown:

‘Samba de Orfeu’ by Luiz Bonfá27 Quero viver, quero sambar… Se a fantasia se perder, eu compro outra Quero sambar, quero viver… Depois do samba, meu amor, posso morrer… Vamos viver, vamos sambar… Se a fantasia se perder, eu compro outra (…)

‘Orpheus’s Samba’ by Luiz Bonfá I want to live, I want to sambar28… If the fancy dress gets lost, I buy another one I want sambar, I want to live… After samba, my love, I can die… Let’s live, let’s sambar… If the fancy dress gets lost, I buy another one (…) The lyrics say: after samba, my love, I can die. This reiterates the importance that samba has as emotional refuge and solace. During carnival, samba heals all wounds and makes people forget about all misery in life – that, at least, is the idea the film puts forward. With samba people celebrate freedom and the joy of life to such an extent that even death loses its sting, as long as there is samba. The lyrics also point out, for the last time, that carnival is the framework for

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the love story between Orpheus and Eurydice. It was during carnival that they both met, and it was during carnival that they had the best time of their lives by dancing samba together and discovering their love. In these four days of samba they were free to live and love, and when carnival is finally over on Ash Wednesday, they are dead, too – an end to the story that drastically shows how temporary carnival’s promise of release is. Again, the Greek myth, its echo in the story told in the film, and the use of samba music to structure that film, all blend: the idea of fate and formal closure make sense together.

Orfeu Negro, DVD chapter 16, time code 01:42:45 In this scene, the song ‘A Felicidade’ evinces the fatalism and pessimism characteristic of the samba lírico-amoroso. Love is impossible to reach, leaving only death as a solution for the emotional conflict. Here, the malandro falls into a vicious circle of disgrace. Orpheus accepts Hermes’s advice to go to the morgue to see Eurydice’s body and decides to take her with him. As he walks away towards the hills to go back home, we hear an intimate solo guitar playing the film’s opening tune ‘A Felicidade’, while Orpheus keeps whispering amorous words to Eurydice. But the focus of the soundtrack on Orpheus’s thoughts of his lost love extends to music as well when he starts singing the first verse of this song: The happiness of the poor seems to be the grand illusion of carnival, people work the whole year … Orpheus’s singing stops when he sees that his house is on fire. Mira, the culprit, is taking her revenge for being cheated on. She sees Orpheus with Eurydice in his arms and, as she thinks that Eurydice is still alive, she throws stones at them. Orpheus steps back from her attack to the cliff edge and falls to his death as Mira throws a stone that hits his head. The dead couple lie close to each other, and the soundtrack returns with only an intimate guitar playing the melody that in the song accompanies the lyrics: Sadness has no end, happiness does. The return of the tune at the end confirms that the story has played out a key motif of the samba lírico-amoroso: the malandro pays the tragic price for his love for a woman. Sadness will also torment Serafina and Mira, who lament the death of Orpheus and Eurydice. The fact that at the end, only the guitar is left of the song confirms the identification of the vocal part of the song with Orpheus’s voice: once he is dead, that voice is also dead. The guitar, however, even if Orpheus was its master, lives and



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Figure 6  Orpheus and Eurydice: united in death. Orfeu, dir: Marcel Camus (Dispat Films/Tupan Filmes, 1959).

plays on – and will, of course, be played by Zeca. Orpheus and Eurydice are united at last, even if only in death. On a formal level, the film comes back to its opening music at the end, a common feature of film scores: The closure of the storyline is confirmed by the rounding-off of the music, alerting us to the fact that the storyline of a romantic drama of this kind is as much a construction as the musical structure of a film score.

Black Orfeu as minor cinema As a French adaptation of a Brazilian play, itself an adaptation of a Greek myth, Orpheu Negro is as much about Brazil as it is of it, and with its focus on the carnival it latches onto a conventional image of the country. It allows us to interpret this in two different ways. In a first interpretation, this conventional image can be related to a stereotypical image of Brazil as an idyllic paradise and

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festive place where people from the favelas seem not to suffer from their hardship or from being excluded from the middle class. This follows the understanding of director Ruy Guerra that films can fall into a populist trap by showing the people in festive moments rather than in their daily work and struggle. Ruy Guerra understands that popular themes should not be the only subject presented in popular cinema. It was expected that the popular cinema would create a political relationship with the potentially revolutionary classes, such as the urban proletariat and the rural masses (Johnson and Stam, 1995: 49–50). However, using Deleuze’s minor cinema’s concept, we can interpret samba and the festivities of carnival in Black Orpheus as important cultural manifestations from Afro-Brazilians that enhance consciousness of popular culture in Brazil. Such a concept finds its similarities to the Manifesto for a Popular Cinema written by director Nelson Pereira dos Santos in 1974, advocating the defence of Brazilian popular culture through cinema.29 He believed that by defending popular cultural expression, filmmakers also defend popular political ideas.30 According to dos Santos, it is important to celebrate this culture since ‘it is different from other superficial, elitist cultural forms that follow antiquated colonized models’ (Johnson and Stam, 1995: 47). In Black Orpheus people from the favelas are presented to the world not as an oppressed minority, but as a people with a strong and rich culture responsible for establishing samba and carnival as the Brazilian nation’s pride. Hence, the cultural manifestation of samba and carnival can be seen as a means of transforming the political and cultural perception of the country. Thus, the film also imagines Orpheus and Eurydice’s favela as a place of a new origin, not primarily defined by a colonial past of oppression, but engaged in the re- and self-invention of a community and its (musical) culture. Although Black Orpheus is not part of the cinema novo it shares an interesting characteristic with ‘Third Cinema’: the hybridity of different cultural objects that come from local and international connections. The use of an ancient Greek myth picturing Brazil through the lens of another culture and its adaptation based on Vinícius de Moraes’s play is combined with the use of samba, carnival and bossa nova in Rio de Janeiro. This experimentation of multi socio-cultural connections provides a unique experience in the way we perceive national identity in Brazil. It is possible, therefore, to compare this hybridity of ‘Third Cinema’ in ‘minor cinemas’ with the Tropicália movement in Brazil and its ‘cultural cannibalism’31 that integrated foreign cultural influences into traditional Brazilian culture. The



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so-called process of cannibalizing has been present since colonial times in Brazil, with slaves and whites making music together to provide the first Brazilian urban dances. And it continues today, when, for example, folkloric tradition meets the sound of heavy metal or electronics to become truly popular music.

Conclusion The samba lírico-amoroso portrays the romantic, eloquent and poetic sambista who falls in love with a woman. The sambista makes use of poetic traditions from ‘white’ culture in his lyrics to explain his love, and shows himself even willing to quit his life as a malandro to be with his beloved one. The use of these poetic traditions from elite culture, and the consideration of a change of a lifestyle by the sambista/malandro, can be read as a symbolic intrusion – or at least influence – of white culture into the world of the favela. The analysis of selected scenes from Black Orpheus shows that the world of samba in the favelas was not only invaded by the influence of white literature in their lyrics, but also by the white middle-class reinvention of samba: bossa nova. The romantic and idealist lyrics of bossa nova share poetic features with the samba lírico-amoroso, creating a strong relationship between these two genres. In Black Orpheus, the malandro is overpowered by the love for his woman, which can be understood as a projection onto the female character of his domination by the social system and by bossa nova. Fatalism and pessimism would follow the sambista, who will face a tragic end. However, if we consider bossa nova as a contemporary version of samba that follows the ‘evolutionary line’ of the Brazilian music proposed by Caetano Veloso, it allows us to make a different interpretation of the soundtrack. Here, bossa nova/samba showed that the lyricism of the songs could intentionally or unintentionally depict the importance of samba and carnival as a form of solace and refuge for Afro-Brazilians despite all the hardship. The lyrics invoke an awareness of social problems and less favourable emotional circumstances, but they all envision somehow a desire, a dream, of creating an idyllic life and new hopes for Afro-Brazilians. Experimentation and self-reinvention has been a trend in Brazilian music since colonial times, when African and European music mixed together, creating a diversity of music genres. Samba, carnival and bossa nova all draw from local and international influences and from all social levels. This gives to

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Afro-Brazilians a representation not of an oppressed minority, but of a main contributor for making Brazil’s music so unique. With that in mind, the selfexpression of Afro-Brazilians through samba and all other local and international influences ultimately broke the boundaries between the ‘out there’ and the morro, demonstrating once more the suitability of ‘cultural cannibalism’ as a metaphor to describe national art and the expression of national identity in Brazil.

Notes 1 As Vinícius de Moraes explains, ‘One morning, as I was reading the Orpheus legend […] a story I always loved for its linking the poet and the musician—I heard a batucada coming from the neighboring favela […] the two ideas strangely fused in my mind and I had the impression of a strong relation between the two. I began to reflect on the life of blacks in Rio and to Hellenize their experience. Suddenly, I had the idea of making Orpheus as a sambista characterized by great interior beauty.’ (Quoted in Stam, 1997: 168) 2 According to his biographer, Vinícius de Moraes was so furious with what was done with his source play that he left the screening room in the middle of the projection. Later, he told friends he found the film full of clichés and superficial notions about Brazil: ‘Camus missed the pathos of my play. He just made an exotic film about Brazil.’ In interviews, Camus described Brazil as a ‘country without roots, made of transplanted races, without tradition of expression where blacks live in favelas in order to flee from civilization’. The Brazilian film critic Walter Silva responded that Brazilians were hardly a ‘people without roots or a tradition of expression […] Blacks live in the favelas out of economic necessity […] Furthermore, there are many poor and working class whites in the favelas’ (Stam, 1997: 172). 3 As stated in Carlos Diegues website, 2011. 4 Tom Jobim also composed the songs for the play, and the lyrics were by Vinícius de Moraes. In the theatrical play some of the pieces, such as the overture, were arranged for orchestra by Tom Jobim in a bossa nova and samba style. In contrast, other pieces such as ‘Monólogo de Orfeu’ are recitative poems accompanied by flute and guitar, with the characteristic melodies and harmonies of the bossa nova tradition. 5 Brazilian tambourine, with tuneable skin and inverted jingles (McGowan and Pessanha, 2009: 245). 6 A notched instrument, often made of bamboo or metal, that is scraped with a stick and produces a crisp sound (McGowan and Pessanha, 2009: 245). 7 Double bell – each bell is a different size – struck by a wooden stick (McGowan and Pessanha, 2009: 240).



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8 Small friction drum with a thin stick inside attached to the drum skin. The drummer rubs the stick with a moistened cloth and with one hand applies pressure to the drum skin, producing grunting, groaning and squeaking noises (McGowan and Pessanha, 2009: 243). 9 Also known as batuque(s), is a samba drumming in different instruments, tending to be more rhythmically improvisatory. 10 Matos proposes the following typology for samba: lírico-amoroso, apologético nacionalista and malandro (1982: 46–8). 11 Those who compose, dance, or play samba, as Moura quotes: ‘with an ease that comes from the cradle’ (Moura, 2004: 68). 12 Roda is the Portuguese word for ‘circle’. It was an opportunity for people to participate by dancing, singing, clapping and even batucando (improvising rhythms on a percussion instrument). The collective singing of people in rodas de samba was a way to share ideas, feelings, culture and values in songs, and providing a sense of belonging to a group or community through music, thus creating favourable conditions for the practice of samba. The roda de samba allows everyone to participate by alternating roles with other participants. For instance, someone who is singing in a roda de samba can start to dance while someone else takes their place in the singing. 13 For full lyrics in Portuguese visit http://letras.mus.br/ze-keti/173096/ 14 My translation. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are mine. 15 For full lyrics in Portuguese visit http://letras.mus.br/tom-jobim/49028/ 16 Saudade is the Portuguese word for longing and yearning, filled with emotion and idealization. Bossa nova explored the theme of saudade, which was constantly linked to love that is far away, or a love that has failed but could have worked out. 17 For full lyrics in Portuguese visit http://letras.mus.br/luiz-bonfa/47073/ 18 English translation by Perrone (2002: 69). 19 ‘Out there’ is the English translation for Lá fora, which can be understood as the mainstream society that is (perceived to be) fundamentally different from the Afro-Brazilian communities of the shantytowns. The term is used by Shaw (1996: 6) and by Matos (1982: 36), but neither provides information about its origin. 20 A malandro is a Brazilian character in many samba lyrics of the 1930s and 1940s. A malandro is consistently in love with women and is often depicted as a vagabond who uses his cunning skills to deceive others and avoid work. A malandro can also be understood as an expression of the marginal world of the favelas. 21 For full lyrics in Portuguese visit http://letras.mus.br/tom-jobim/53/. For full lyrics in English, refer to http://lyricstranslate.com/en/felicidade-happiness.html. “A Felicidade” lyrics © by LES NOUVELLES EDITIONS MERIDIAN – PARIS – France. Used by courtesy of LES NOUVELLES EDITIONS MERIDIAN – PARIS – France.

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22 English translation by Perrone (2001: 68). 23 The act of behaving like a ‘malandro’. 24 Morro is the Portuguese word for hill. Rio de Janeiro is surrounded by many hills upon which the favelas are located. 25 This may have been the early years of the urban reforms in Rio, between 1904 and 1906, when Afro-descendants started to move to the ‘morros’, as the shantytowns were not very big yet. 26 English translation by Perrone (2001: 68). 27 For full lyrics in Portuguese visit http://letras.mus.br/elisete-cardoso/ samba-de-orfeu/ 28 Verb meaning to dance samba. 29 Johnson and Stam define popular culture here as ‘the spontaneous cultural expression of the people’, (1995: 47) that is to say, of the vast marginalized majority of the Brazilian population. The form of marginalization that Johnson and Stam refer to is probably economic. 30 Dos Santos explains: ‘The idea is not merely for the film to be marketable, but rather to create a situation in which we could affirm the principles of Brazilian popular culture through cinema. My idea was also to defend popular political ideas – the legitimate claims of the people – which have been until now hidden from view and which our films should in some way reflect’ (Johnson, 1982: 228–9). 31 Metaphor used for a process whereby Brazilian artists would take in a diverse set of influences, digest them, and produce a fusion that was uniquely Brazilian, according to the manifesto by Oswald de Andrade (Dunn, 2001: 19).

References Browning, Barbara (1995) Samba: Resistance in Motion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Chaytor, H. J. (1912) The Troubadors. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dias, Fabiana Quintana (2011) ‘Orfeu. Do Mito à Realidade Brasileira, Uma Análise da Trilha Sonora do Filmes Orfeu Negro (1959) e Orfeu (1999) Baseados na Peça Orfeu da Conceição de Vinicius de Moraes’. MA diss., Universidade Estadual de Campinas. Diegues, Carlos (2011) ‘Carlos Diegues’. Available online: http://www.carlosdiegues. com.br/destaques_integra.asp?idA=104 [accessed 30 August 2011]. Diniz, André (1975) Almanaque do Samba: A História do Samba, o que ouvir, o que ler, onde curtir. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar.



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Donnelly, K. J. (ed.) (2001) Film Music. Critical Approaches. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Dunn, Christopher (2001a) Brutality Garden: Tropicália and the emergence of a Brazilian counterculture. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press. Dunn, Christopher (2001b) ‘Tropicália, Counterculture, and the Diasporic Imagination in Brazil’, in A. Perrone and Christopher Dunn (eds) Brazilian Popular Music & Globalisation. New York: University of Florida Press: 72–95. Dunn, Christopher and Charles A. Perrone (2001) ‘Chiclete com Banana: Internationalization in Brazilian Popular Music’, in Charles. A. Perrone and Christopher Dunn (eds) Brazilian Popular Music & Globalisation. New York: University of Florida Press: 1–38. Fryer, Peter (2000) Rhythms of Resistance: African Musical Heritage in Brazil. London: Wesleyan University Press. Hertzmann, Mark (2008) ‘Surveillance and Difference: The Making of Samba, Race and Nation in Brazil, 1880s–1970s’. PhD diss., University of Wisconsin. Hess, Hans Michael Anselmo (2013) ‘The Uses of Samba in Brazilian Films, 1943–2011’. PhD diss., University of Bristol. Inglis, Ian, ed. (2003) Popular Music and Film. London: Wallflower. Johnson, Randal (1984) Cinema Novo x 5: Masters of Contemporary Brazilian Film. Austin: University of Texas Press. Johnson, Randal and Robert Stam (1995) Brazilian Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press. McCann, Bryan (2004) Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil. London and Durham: Duke University Press. McGowan, Chris and Ricardo Pessanha (2009) The Brazilian Sound: Samba, Bossa Nova, and the Popular Music of Brazil. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Matos, Claudia (1982) Acertei no Milhar: Samba e Malandragem no Tempo de Getúlio. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra S/A. Moura, Roberto M. (1986) Carnaval: Da redentora à Praça do Apocalipse. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar. Moura, Roberto (1995) Tia Ciata e a Pequena África no Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Coleção Biblioteca Carioca. Moura, Roberto M. (2004) No Princípio, Era A Roda. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco. Murphy, John P. (2006) Music in Brazil: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Nagib, Lúcia (2007) Brazil On Screen: Cinema Novo, New Cinema, Utopia. London and New York: I. B. Tauris. Nery, Emília Saraiva (2011) ‘Nacionalismo Musical e “Invasão Cultural” na Linha Evolutiva da Música Popular Brasileira’, Revista Brasileira de História & Ciências Sociais, Vol. 3 No 6 (December): 120–31. Parr, Adrian (2010) The Deleuze Dictionary. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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Perrone, Charles A. (2001) ‘Myth, Melopeia, and Mimesis: Black Orpheus, Orfeu, and Internationalization in Brazilian Popular Music’, in A. Perrone and Christopher Dunn (eds) Brazilian Popular Music & Globalisation. New York: University of Florida Press: 46–71. Powrie, Phil and Robynn Stilwell, eds (2006) Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-Existing Music in Film. Aldershot: Ashgate. Ribeiro, Bruno (2005) A Suprema Elegância do Samba: Notas Sobre Campinas. Campinas: Pontes. Rocha, Glauber (1995) ‘An Aesthetic of Hunger’, in Randal Johnson and Robert Stam (eds) Brazilian Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press: 68–71. Sandroni, Carlos (2001) Feitiço Decente: Tranformações do Samba no Rio de Janeiro 1917–1933. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar. Shaw, Lisa (1999) The Social History of the Brazilian Samba. Aldershot: Ashgate. Silva, Marília T. Barboza da (1983) Cartola – Os Tempos Idos. Rio de Janeiro: Funarte/ Instituto Nacional de Música. Sodré, Muniz (1979. Samba: O Dono Do Corpo. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Codecri LTDA. Stam, Robert (2004 [1997]) Tropical Multiculturalism: A Comparative History of Race in Brazilian Cinema & Culture. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Stroud, Sean (2008) The Defence of Tradition in Brazilian Popular Music: Politics, Culture and the Creation of Música Popular Brasileira. Aldershot: Ashgate. Tinhorão, José Ramos (1974) Pequena História da Música Popular. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Vozes. Treece, David (2013) ‘Orpheus in Babylon: Music in the Films of Rio de Janeiro’, in Brazilian Jive: From Samba to Bossa and Rap. London: Reaktion Books: 159–76. Veloso, Caetano (1997) Verdade Tropical. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Veloso, Caetano (2001) ‘Carmen Mirandadada’, in Charles A. Perrone and Christopher Dunn (eds) Brazilian Popular Music & Globalisation. New York: University of Florida Press: 39–45.

5

Chinese Identity: Poetics of Cinema and Music in Hero Germán Gil-Curiel

University College Cork, Ireland

As hybrid music drawing from Eastern and Western traditions, Tan Dun’s work has been understood as both national – indeed at times nationalistic – and global. On the one hand, as the composer of the music for the ceremony in which Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, the Olympic games inauguration in 2008, and as a supporter of the music of Chinese ethnic minorities, it is easy to understand the national dimensions of his work. On the other hand, Tan Dun himself has claimed to be an ‘international’ composer for a global audience, conceiving music as a resource ‘for the sake of [itself], divorced from the social codes and meanings that have been traditionally affixed to the ritualistic employment of musical instruments in China’ (Everett, 2004: 13). Others have seen his work in different terms. Alluding to the role played by John Cage in Tan Dun’s career, John Corbett describes his work thus: ‘an Asian composer in the West uses techniques devised by a Western composer inspired by Asian philosophy; the work is played for an Asian audience which hears it as an artefact of the bizarre West. Orientalism is reflected back and forth like a music-cultural mise-en-abyme’ (Corbett, 2000: 180). Here I shall argue that in his relentless drive towards hybridity and spectacle in composition and performance, Tan Dun is the musician writing for and through the visual that best fits Chinese identity today. He consistently uses fragments of traditions from abroad that the opening up policy has now brought, and mixes them with traditional ones from China, quoting them to shape a unique collage in an instance of postmodern authorship. I further contend that Tan Dun’s ‘visual’ music for film, installation and performance, follows Gilles Deleuze’s approach to the minor in that it is mainly interested

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‘neither in representation nor interpretation, but in experimentation’ (Verevis, 2005: 168). I begin with a brief overview of Tan Dun’s career, emphasizing the crucial role that hybridity and spectacle have played in it. Then, I move on to analyse the way that Tan Dun’s work in the music for the film Hero (Zhang, 2002) – a film that deals with the unification of China, and in many ways representative of Tan Dun’s oeuvre – can be regarded as national, but also remarks upon what can be termed its cosmopolitan aspects. I end the chapter with concluding remarks.

Hybridity and spectacle Tan Dun is probably the most renowned contemporary Chinese composer. His vast oeuvre comprises opera, symphonic works, concertos, chamber, solo, organic and vocal music, as well as ensembles, oratorios, chorus, ritual music and performance, multimedia and orchestra. In addition, he has written the music for various films, among them Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (Li, 2000) and Hero (Zhang, 2002). Born in Changsha, in Hunan, Tan Dun eventually settled in the United States, like various Chinese musicians of his generation. In 1974, when he lived in the Chinese countryside, he became interested in local folk music and regional drama. In 1976, he entered the Hunan Peking Opera Troupe, and in 1978 the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where he graduated in Composition in 1983. In his early compositions, Tan Dun used exclusively the pentatonic scale of traditional Chinese music, but at the same time he showed a remarkable capacity for innovation. For instance, his 1979 controversial symphony Li Sao – translated as ‘Encountering Sorrow’1 (Mittler, 1997) or ‘Falling into Sadness’ – based on a quintessential Chinese theme, the poetry of Qu Yuan, ‘incorporated Chinese music and instruments, used polytonality and clustering sounds’ (Melvin and Cai, 2004: 326–7). During the 1980s, there were several cultural exchanges between China and other countries. As a result, studies involving Western and Chinese music started to motivate new Chinese composers, among them Tan Dun, Ye Xiaogang and Qu Xiaosong, to experiment with an amalgamation of music of Chinese traditional themes and styles and new treatments borrowed from Western musical techniques. In 1984, the first concert of the so-called era of ‘New Music’ was held in Beijing, comprising six pieces from different composers,



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among them Tan Dun. While the ‘New Music’ movement was by then in fact far from new, having started in the 1920s, it had until then mostly entailed the Europeanization of Chinese music, in a process that was seen as part of the modernization of China. After a long period during which the intellectual and cultural weakness of the nation was more and more evident, scholars considered that ideas from abroad could provide an answer to the intellectual impasse. In this context, ‘Chinese forebears strove for the total westernization of Chinese music—because at the time modernization was equated with westernization, and they believed that westernising Chinese music would transform it into a high musical art’ (Liu, 2010: 13). Later, local governments began ‘to use classical music as a means of projecting a modern and progressive image’ (Melvin and Cai, 2004: 300). However, the musicians involved in the New Music movement in the 1980s frequently regarded the process as one in which European music provided Chinese music with a renewed means for national expression, not one of Europeanization. Wang Zhenya comments: I have some experience where the question of national character is concerned, and when I once heard the Central Philharmonic play Tan Dun’s Li sao [Encountering Sorrow], the depth of national style and feeling in it far surpassed the typical works of the 1950s. (Liu, 2010: 539)

Another view is that the hybridizing process would result in a new, global kind of music. Liu Ching-chih for instance argues that Tan Dun, along with other overseas Chinese composers, are also agents of pluralistic cultures. This is because they are trying to express themselves through fundamentally Western media and ways of expression, while in the meantime they are establishing their individual styles in which the Chineseness has inevitably become an integral part of their compositions. (Liu, 2010: 645)

In 1985, Tan Dun’s concert based on the theme ‘Exploration and Continuation’ included a series of new works of traditional music played on instruments made by the composer himself (Jin, 2011: 137), and in Man ban (Lento) 1985, for string orchestra and in Symphony in two movements he experimented with new sound perspectives, mixing a ‘Western orchestra playing in a style of Stravinsky with traditional Chinese drama and ballads, making particular use of percussion’ (Liu, 2010: 526). In 1986, he continued his studies at Columbia University in New York under the direction of Zhou Wenzhong who had, years earlier, studied with Edgard Varèse (Locke, 2009: 294; Liu, 2010: 526). His opera

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series Nine Songs (1989) is a collection of poems by Qu Yuan, devoted to nature, with the poems sung in both classical Chinese and contemporary English, using a small ensemble of Chinese and Western instruments. His graduation work, a short symphony entitled Death and Fire: Dialogue with Paul Klee (1993) is a sort of dialogue with the painter’s art, drawing from movements such as surrealism, expressionism and cubism. It already highlighted what would later become a crucial theme in Tan Dun’s work: the relationship between music and colour. For just as Klee was fascinated by the music that he found in colour, Tan Dun has been equally fascinated by the colour he finds in music. His work Eight Memories in Watercolour evinces this (Tan, 2008b). During this period, in addition to hybridizing through music, he also started incorporating Chinese rituals and philosophy into the performances, in his ‘Orchestral Theatre Series’. He argued that unlike the relatively recent tradition of separating the music performer and the audience, ‘the history of music as an integral part of spiritual life, as ritual, as partnership in enjoyment and spirit, is as old as humanity itself ’. He seeks that music ‘can once again become a ritual bridge between the creative and the re-creative, completing the circle of spiritual life’ (Tan, 1992). Other aspects of Chinese philosophy that he has incorporated into his music include the principle of yin yang, in which opposites are complementary instead of oppositional, co-existing in a harmonious way. The effect of this complementariness leads to a dynamic and constructive system, in which, by interacting with each other, opposites transcend their individual limitations, although either may predominate at a given stage of the process. This duality was fundamental for the series called ‘Organic music and orchestra’, which consists of finding correspondences between contrasting materials such as water, ceramics, stone and paper. The Earth Concerto for stone and ceramic percussion and orchestra (Tan, 2010 [2009]) draws from Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), which in turn draws from the poetry of Li Po. As for paper, the Paper Concerto for Paper Percussion and Orchestra (Tan, 2008a [2003]) explores the acoustic range of paper. As we shall see below, in the film Hero it was water that became the privileged element of nature around which much of the music was composed. More recently, these explorations have led Tan Dun into performances that are reminiscent of the concept on ‘total art’. Supported by multimedia technology – as displayed in his operas and orchestral music – Tan Dun draws on theatrical, dance and organic elements, against a backdrop of natural scenarios. In The Map (Tan, 2004 [2002]) written for cello, video and orchestra,



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he experimented with the application of video to music. Documentary footage depicting the lives of Chinese ethnic minorities including the Tujia, Miao and Dong and also musical performances by them, is played on a screen at the location where musicians are playing a concert for cello. Thus, the musicians on the site interact with those from the ethnic minorities on screen, mixing live and recorded performance. The work was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Yo-Yo Ma played the cello for the premier. In this way, Tan Dun’s visual music, as the main protagonist of his multimedia installations, brings traditional ethnic music into dialogue with the latest technology, mirroring a process that is taking place on a wider scale all over China today. Likewise, his Water Heavens (Tan, 2010) performance for strings, water, Pipa and voice, part of his ‘Visual Music’ series related to water, takes place in an old Chinese pavilion, based on a concept of ‘Architectural Music’: A stream of water flows in to the hall, forming a pond surrounded by the audience, creating the stage of Water Heavens. In this ancient house, a drop of water falls from high above through the oculus bringing out the musical dialogue of Zen music and Bach […] In Water Heavens music can be seen and architecture can be heard. (Tan, 2010)

Tan Dun himself has framed the process as a matter of fusion, in which ideological and cultural oppositions, in his words, ‘melt, fuse and blend’ to synthesize in one unit: ‘1+1=1, not 2’ (Tan, 2007). He aspires to create in terms of ‘not just visual and aural, not just organic and orchestra, or not just east and west, or inside and outside, or old and new, or past and future […] it is very tricky and difficult, and of course, it is very personal too’ (Tan, 2007).

Tan Dun in cinema Between 1983 and 2013, Tan Dun had composed the music for nineteen films, documentaries or TV programmes (IMDb), including the martial arts films Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Li, 2000), Hero (Zhang, 2002) and The Banquet (Feng, 2006) which he later took as the basis for his ‘Multimedia and Orchestra’ series. Using as support original edited footage from the films synchronized to the music, he reversed the established hierarchy between the visual and the auditory, in which the latter usually has the supportive role. This

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resulted in the concerts entitled The Martial Arts Trilogy (for the World Expo 2010 Shanghai), comprising Crouching Tiger Concerto for Cello and double Erhu, Hero Concerto for Violin and Guqin and Banquet Concerto for Piano and Chorus.

Hero2 Martial arts films began to be produced in Mainland China in the 1920s (Dissannayake, 2003: 77). Their Chinese name, wuxia shenguai pian, literally translates as ‘martial arts – spirit films’. They have had considerable impact and influence all over the world, especially recently. To Wimal Dissannayake, ‘These films highlight the power, beauty and agility of the human body, while the fight sequences are most often choreographed in a way that emphasizes the poetry of movement. Increasingly, special effects are being deployed to ensure the maximum effect in underlining these movements’ (Dissannayake, 2003: 86). Thus the emphasis when discussing them tends to focus on movement, rather than music. Belonging to the martial arts tradition, Hero (Zhang, 2002) can be considered a quintessential national film also in that its topic is the very foundation of China. The score for this film comprises elements of traditional Chinese music, Western orchestration and Japanese percussion. Itzhak Perlman played some violin solos, and Tan Dun himself an ancient Chinese melody, using his own violin with silk strings tuned to the Chinese pitch in an effort to convey both historical accuracy and the surreal atmosphere that sometimes pervades martial arts films (see Table 1). In the process of writing the score, Tan Dun engaged the China Philharmonic Orchestra, comprising Western instruments, including strings and brass; the Chinese Philharmonic Chorus, composed of fifty bass singers; the Ancient Rao Ensemble of Changsha Museum, the KODO Drummers of Japan; guqin player Liu Li and the soprano You Yan. The soundtrack comprises sixteen pieces. The main theme, ‘For the World’, repeated throughout the score – sometimes in variations – is a mournful pentatonic melody played on the violin, emulating an ancient fiddle. This theme alternates with the martial epic trait, as the hard (martial) and the soft (the main theme), played out in a yin yang fashion. Sometimes, the violin’s sound evokes the distinctive sound of the erhu; at other times, it succeeds in conjuring up an ancient fiddle.3

Overture

Epic

Features

Performers

Creates an atmosphere of grandiosity, thanks to the chorus, strings, brass and the Perlman (violin) and majestic drums. The violin plays main theme, and when singing the melody, it KODO prompts such feelings as sentimental nostalgia, supported by the strings. Warriors KODO drums beat the rhythm in a moderately slow tempo in duple time, Perlman (violin) and strongly projecting a martial character. The chorus and the brass support the KODO whole with an imposing tutti. At Emperor’s Full orchestra, chorus drums with a signature time of 4/4. Tan Dun (violin) and Palace KODO Swift Sword and Its moderato tempo beats by strong rhythm depicts a striking epic scene. In this Tan Dun (violin) and Farewell, Hero piece, the violin-like takes the main theme alternating with the chorus. KODO Ethereal and At Emperor’s Effect of ‘liquid echoes’ – or superposed flowing of sounds – added to the Tan Dun (violin) and Flowing Palace orchestration as a discreet backdrop. This effect gives the musical narrative KODO a touch of unreality. Oneiric atmosphere created thanks to Chime Bells, seen in Qin’s Palace. Played as a non-diegetic solo piece when Nameless enters the Emperor’s Palace. ‘Gone With Conveyed by the voice, with the backing of the orchestra, chorus and drums, and Perlman (violin) and Leaves’ discreet, aquatic, painful echoes. Slow melody. KODO, and You Yan soprano Above Water Mainly uses string instruments. The chorus sings the main theme on a backdrop Liu Li (guqin) of aquatic echoes, reinforced by the crystalline texture of the harp. Longing The mourning fiddle is heard against the backdrop of cellos, violins and harp. Its Perlman (violin) tempo is quite slow and soft. Western sound from the orchestra dialogues with the fiddle. Low tempo: develops a dialogue between the guqin and the violin’s voice, also Perlman, KODO In the Chess evoking the lost ancient fiddle. A part for guqin follows, developing harmonics, drums and Liu Li Court5 glissandos and portamentos, accompanied by discreet drums and strings. (guqin) A sudden change imposes a more rhythmic tempo by the drums, leading through a crescendo to a triumphal finale.

Pieces

Mood

Table 1  The Hero Soundtrack4 Chinese Identity: Poetics of Cinema and Music in Hero 77

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Action takes place during the reign of the King Qin Shi Huangdi, 246–221 bc, who conquered what had until then been warring states, and unified them to form China. Loosely based on historical narratives, the film revolves around an encounter between a man, a swordsman called ‘Nameless’, and the King of Qin. The swordsman has earned the right to meet the King alone at a distance of twenty metres, as he has managed to kill three very wellknown would-be assassins who had been plotting an attempt on his life, and meeting the King at this safe distance was the reward. Over the course of the meeting, Nameless tells the story of how he killed each one of them, but as the narration progresses it becomes clear that there is more to the stories than meets the eye. By the end of Nameless’s account, the King of Qin understands the three assassins had in fact consented to be killed, sacrificing themselves so that Nameless, who they understood was more capable than them, could earn the right to meet the King at a distance of twenty metres, and use the occasion to kill him. Just as this is about to happen however, Nameless understands, through the conversation with the King, that unless the King lives and succeeds, war and bloodshed will continue. At that point he too decides to sacrifice himself, like the assassins he had killed before had done, but this time for what he regards as the common good. He does not try to kill the King, but is sentenced to death anyway, for plotting. The film ends with a note on how this period marked the unification of China, but remains ambiguous as to who the hero of the title was. The film has been understood in various ways: as a postmodern story that deconstructs history and represents it as a series of conflicting narratives, with truth being a matter of perspective; as a defence of absolute rule; or on the contrary, as a statement that individuals, even if they appear to be mighty kings, are ultimately constrained by circumstances, including the time and place and the social milieu they face; and many more (for an account of the various interpretations see (de la Garza, 2007). More important for my purposes here however is the way it has also been understood as a remarkable film that is at the same time Chinese as regards genre – wuxia, or traditional martial arts –, plot, actors and crew, but also global in its aesthetic features and its approach to issues of national identity, not least through music. Hero seems to have taken on the ‘modernization’ of China alluded to above, by renewing culturally and aesthetically both the film industry and music, as national and also global heritage. In Hero we can hear all the features of Tan Dun’s compositional style that have become his hallmark



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described above, namely hybridity in terms of music and philosophical traditions, and artistic boundary crossings, but also a personal search and a desire to focus on universal themes. In the paragraphs that follow I show how these play out in one of the main scenes, where Nameless kills the first assassin and music has a central role.

At the Chess Court Music and time Starts: 06:41 Ends: 14:52 This is a compelling scene in which psychic and diegetic time mix, bound by the time of the music. The protagonist Nameless is telling, in a flashback, the King of Qin how he defeated the first assassin. He found the assassin at a chess court, he says, as the assassin ‘had a reputation of loving both chess and music’, arts that in China were often enjoyed together, and attended frequently. An elderly, blind musician plays a guqin while guests play chess. At a first stage, the seven elite guards from the Qin Court, who had been trailing the assassin for days, confront him at the Chess Court and try to arrest him. The assassin defeats them, but just as he is about to leave the Chess Court – at the same time as the musician is wrapping up his instrument to leave as well – Nameless arrives. A short preliminary encounter between the swordsmen takes place. Next, Nameless asks the guqin player, ‘Sir, would you be kind enough to play us another piece?’ He adds, ‘Martial arts and music share the same principles. Both wrestle with complex chords and rare melodies.’ The musician returns to his seat and starts improvising a piece. At that point, music takes centre stage (Figure 7), and the combat scene becomes a kind of dance. The opponents then close their eyes. Nameless observes, ‘We stood facing each other for a long time. Neither of us made a move while our combat unfolded in the depths of our minds,’ and the fight goes on until all of the guqin strings suddenly burst. This internalization of space is visually highlighted on the screen by means of a change in the saturation, temperature and tint of the images. This psychic space corresponds to the guqin player. Black and white is used to indicate the psychic time, alternating shots in which the blind musician plays in colour, to switch to the time of the story.

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Figure 7  At that point, music takes centre stage. Hero, dir. Zhang Yimou (Sil-Metropole Organization CFCC, 2002)

In line with other Asian narratives discussed in this volume, blindness is an important feature of the musician, who is in this way ‘looking inwards’, evoking a realm of subjectivity. It is this interior perception, heightened by his blindness, which allows him to pluck and strum the strings of his instrument to match the swordsmen’s movements. The swordsmen in this respect echo the musician as they close their eyes to see the battle unfolding in their minds, all the more evoking a sense of their relation to music. And in martial arts, the apprentice must develop the ability to fight applying the scheme’s techniques with their eyes closed. It may be for this reason that, when describing his Martial Arts Trilogy, Tan Dun associated it with ballet: ‘The Trilogy features three different films as one opera or ballet in three acts’ (Tan, Martial Arts Trilogy). Rhythmic properties are ascribed ‘in the same sense to both music and bodily or human movement, and that sense is a musical one. Producing music is not more primitive or basic than moving rhythmically, or dancing’ (Hamilton, 2007: 127). In fact, it is thanks to music that the subversion of that reality, conceived as a space-time continuum, takes place. When the very first notes are plucked and some chords and ascending and descending arpeggios are strummed, a powerful energy starts moving in a synchronized and harmonious rhythm. Then the encounter becomes flowing music, like the drops of rain we are shown on screen. The speed of motion of the martial artists mirrors the slow tempo of that music; the passage of time in that timeless dimension is measured by the slow tempo of the music. The balance is broken when one of the opponents collapses and dies. Drops of rain become drops of sorrow (tears) and then drops of blood, binding the cycle of human life to nature. And while this cycle also



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alludes to a traditional characteristic of narratives of national identity, founded on the ‘god of the lineage’ and ‘the god of the land’ (Smith, 1991), with the blood dripping to enter the earth becoming nature, it is also possible to understand it as alluding to death as a common, universal concern.

Music and the Dao The first point to note is the role of water, both visually and audibly, and as the main structure for and source of music in this scene and later in the film – and indeed subsequently in the career of Tan Dun (Tan, 2008). It is a rainy evening and the rhythmic sound of the rain falling down can be heard throughout. At times, we see drops of rain form a water curtain. Water also incessantly drips from the various pavilion roofs, often in a slow motion that increases the drama, and it flows from a tank where the chessboard pieces are kept. Gaston Bachelard has referred to the effect conveyed by depictions of water such as this with words that evoke synaesthesia. To him, drops ‘twinkle and make flicker the light and the mirror of water. When we see them, we hear them quivering’ (Bachelard, 1978: 254, emphasis in the original). It would seem Tan Dun took this effect into consideration when designing the soundscape for Hero. The warriors’ weapons also at times act as percussion instruments on water, as do the legs of Nameless stepping on stones in puddles (Figure 8). The battle does, quite literally become music, or is rendered in terms of music.

Figure 8  Swords become percussion instruments on water. Hero, dir. Zhang Yimou (Sil-Metropole Organization CFCC, 2002)

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Nature, as in Tan Dun’s many pieces of ‘organic music’, becomes the main music instrument. These effects are conveyed through long sequences of scales and arpeggios spread from the bottom upwards, or from the top backwards, whose flowing effects evoke a waterfall or a cascade. Furthermore, moments of silence are also crucial to enhance the sounds that follow, and this is sometimes achieved in the film by the silent contemplation of water. As Bachelard contends, water ‘is a model of calm and silence […] water lives like a great materialised silence’ (Bachelard, 1978: 258). This is certainly the case in Hero. Water has an important symbolism in Daoism. Indeed the very expression, the flowing of the Dao refers to its movement, like a stream, in a natural and spontaneous way and in all directions. Also as a nourishing source, which refers to the capacity of water to be beneficial to all things and all people, nourishing them and keeping them alive (Moeller, 2004: 37). Moreover, water is associated with two of the seminal aesthetic traditions in China: painting and writing calligraphy, valued as an art form in its own right. As for the former, not only is water a basic ingredient in painting, but it is also a subject matter, given ‘the priority accorded to landscape painting in Chinese art’ (Clarke, 2010: 14). And its importance in calligraphy is highlighted in the plot of Hero, since Nameless understands he must let the King of Qin live precisely at the point when the meaning of two characters becomes clear through the conversation with him. They were written by the second would-be assassin that Nameless kills at the moment of dying, with a calligraphy that had gained fame as an epitome of art – thus it was an aesthetic achievement too. Nameless understands their meaning, often translated into English as ‘Our Motherland’, when the encounter with the King reveals it to be ‘China’ as opposed to the former warring states. Second is the instrument the blind musician plays, a guqin. While the guqin can produce a rhythmic, hard and dry texture using staccato, it can also create very soft textures by means of harmonics, vibratos, glissandos, portamentos and arpeggios when rubbing the strings, similar to the Western harp – traditionally associated with specific textures borrowed from water and air as well, making either flowing sounds (plucked strings) or ethereal sounds (rubbed strings). The guqin is able to shape such atmospheres as soft and whispered wind, or the flowing of crystalline and murmured water. Invented during the Zhou Dynasty, the guqin’s capacity of changing its texture so dramatically corresponds to the yin yang alternation of the course of things and events. As it is one of the traditional musical instruments that is most identified with Chinese identity, the guqin plays a very important role in this scene, in which music is so central. For a long



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time, it was considered as a self-development instrument that focuses on the performer’s inner self, reflecting it like a mirror (Jin, 2011: 54). Thus, again we have the ambiguity between the focus on national identity on the one hand, and the focus on the individual on the other. Like humanity, the individual is often also considered the unit in theories that posit the universality of values, in opposition to communities. Third, a predominant theme of the occurrence at the Chess Court is life and death, understood from a Daoist philosophical perspective of time as the rhythm of nature. Indeed, at the chess house where Nameless and the assassin meet, one of them must die. The Zhuangzi – an ancient collection of Chinese fables and anecdotes, and a foundational text of Daoism – often compares the categories of wakefulness and dream to life and death, both states considered natural and equally valuable. The Dao concedes an equal validity and authenticity to all segments of a process of change, unlike incarnation, in which ‘change dissolves a thing and puts something else in its place’ (Moeller, 2004: 83). In the course of change, only change prevails. This concept may be understood as an ontology of process as compared to, in terms of the metaphysical tradition of the West, an ontology of substance. In accordance to Daoism, impermanence of beings and things is integrated into an encompassing duration. The Daoist conception of time is a continuous flow consisting ‘of mutually replacing temporal “nows”’ (Moeller, 2004: 98). In Western philosophy, it was precisely Deleuze that famously made the idea of process and becoming central to philosophy. However, it was Bachelard’s philosophy of the instant – which largely informed Deleuze – coinciding with Daoist conceptions of time as a ‘perpetual flowing process’ that brought music into the equation. According to Bachelard, as ‘time has only one reality, that of the instant’, the world is regulated ‘by a musical measure imposed by the cadence of instants’ (Bachelard, 1992: 46). Furthermore, Bachelard claims that if duration is not homogenous, it might be felt only through instants. Amplified by slow motion, all events in the Chess Court – the rain, the music, the abandoned chessboard, the fight and death – unfold in a sequence of simultaneous and ephemeral instants. In other words, cinematically: the slow motion allows the sequences to subvert conventional time and space, creating a remarkable timeless, oneiric atmosphere, to highlight a collective ritual of synchronized dance, bound by music. Rhythm as a fundamental component of the passage of time is also enshrined in the Book of Changes (I Ching): ‘One Yin, one Yang: that is called Dao, or One time Yin and one time Yang – this is called the rhythm of the Dao’ (Moeller,

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2004: 106). According to this perspective, yin yang is the keystone that structures the rhythm of all natural phenomena. This general concept of nature means that the Dao is the regulator of nature as a rhythmic process. The perennial course of nature, being constituted by complementary elements such as night and day, darkness and brightness and so on, flows rhythmically. Indeed, although water is associated with a continuous fluid, while rhythm is a strong, regular and repeated movement or sound, in the internalized encounter the distinct rhythm martial artists follow when exchanging blows and kicks dissolves into perfectly synchronized movements that flow. Furthermore, rhythm in the Chess Court sets out movement – at times in slow motion – in such a way that all elements gather together in order to create a unity, or a ‘perfect scenario’: the fourth and last Daoist principle I want to argue the music of this scene conveys. To Daoist aesthetics, an accomplished work of art can create a perfect scenario when it surpasses reality. How the work of art was made and its effects are the overriding concerns. This principle is illustrated with the legend of Wu Daozi’s landscape painting, said to have been such a masterpiece, that upon completion the painter himself entered it and disappeared inside, in front of the emperor’s very eyes. In short, art at this level is not just an imitation of reality, but itself real in its own way. Applying these principles to the scene at the Chess Court, the three accomplished artists – or dreamers – close their eyes to create a perfect scenario that surpasses reality. Being a shared, internalized experience, only happening in their minds, the reality gap between the actual act and its maker vanishes. Their art – music, martial art – is as real as the artists. Artists and their art become the same dreaming substance. In Western psychology, this is similar to the concept of ‘flow’ put forward by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, (Csíkszentmihályi, 2009) characterized by complete absorption in what one is doing, and often exemplified by the experience of accomplished musicians. However, in the film this perfect scenario, ephemeral as an instant, is over when its harmonious balance is broken. The perfect scenario is broken by the act of suppressing the other, signalled here by the broken strings that suddenly announce the end of the balance, as an event of contingency. Beyond the nationalist aspects, the music in this scene also evokes a melancholy inherent to the human condition, here symbolized by death.

Music and pattern In addition to the various ways in which the Chinese philosophy of Dao informs



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the way that music is employed in this crucial scene, there are other frameworks for interpretation that also highlight the role of music. Here I turn to Rudolph Arnheim’s contention that the artistic endeavour is about enabling perception to discover underlying structure, in what has been termed a sort of gestalt. As put by Patrick Keating, ‘a successful artwork has a form that will allow the perceiver to see a certain pattern’ (Keating, 2011: 143). I would argue the pattern that the scene at the Chess Court invites audiences to discover is based on music, for it is one of correspondences, as if in an echo chamber. The first correspondence is that between martial arts and chess, both games of strategic skills that involve having the capacity or intelligence to vanquish the enemy. The confrontation between Nameless and the assassin is mirrored by the chessboard, which occupies a full screen shot at the beginning. In both cases, two men are facing each other in combat.6 And in both cases, movement is elicited rhythmically. The music in turn, as I argued above, echoes the images, while the rain echoes tears, which echo blood. The scene at the Chess Court is thus an echo chamber in which the gestalt that Arnheim alluded to is easily grasped from the structure created by the forms, but also, importantly, the sounds and music. In Tan Dun’s music, John Cage once said, ‘the east and the west come together as our one home’ (O’Mahony, 2000). Equally, I would say, it invites Eastern and Western philosophies and theories of art for its interpretation, and can bring the two in dialogue as well.

Concluding remarks I started this chapter arguing that the work of Tan Dun can be understood as a suitable metaphor for Chinese identity in the present context of globalization, as the music he has composed, including his music for film, is mainly characterized by a conscious attempt to use hybridity as a means to both reaffirm tradition and to innovate. The crucial issue is that, unlike the cultural hybridity that has long been the outcome of colonization or Western domination, that has taken several hundred years and that in fact in some places has become the national culture – such as in the Americas – there is agency in the experimental music of Tan Dun. Deleuze argued his concept of a minor cinema in opposition to the major. The latter, he characterized as a machinery whose massive proportions and cultural and commercial global predominance depend on the continuous production and

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promotion of films for mass consumption. The former, produced in search of a national consciousness, has a capacity to associate what is political and what is private (Deleuze, 2009: 209). He also commented on the position of the author or intellectual public figure that can only fracture the status quo imposed by the colonizers ‘by going over to the coloniser’s side, even if only aesthetically, through artistic influences’ (Deleuze, 2009: 213). While the meaning of Hero and its political stance are far from clear and have been the subject of much debate, there is broad agreement that it takes up the conventions of both martial arts and Hollywood blockbusters, and that it was an attempt to, as it were, ‘speak a cinematic language’, not least through music, that would open up global distribution circuits. Be that as it may, I have shown that Tan Dun’s work systematically explores the rich possibilities of merging Eastern and Western music traditions, philosophies and conventions, while also crossing the boundaries of artistic domains, leading to an aesthetic as well as a cultural cross-fertilization. In the composer’s own words: I have always sought to cross boundaries, disciplines and bring different genres together. The tradition of martial arts was created from Chinese opera in the 19th century. To me, the opera tradition is an ancient form of cinema and cinema is the opera of the future. (Tan, Martial Arts Trilogy)

To account for the boundary-crossing media and art such as that displayed in Tan Dun’s, Jacques Rancière has proposed three different paradigms. First, as quoted above, is Friedrich Nietzsche’s – and then Wagner’s – idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk or total artwork, in which art would ultimately become life. Second is the view that hybridization of artistic means is a logical outcome of the postmodern condition, characterized by eclecticism and the levelling off of hitherto entrenched hierarchies. And last is the idea that the various mixtures imply translations from one medium into another, as encountering the work(s) of art and making meaning is an active process: ‘an emancipated community is a community of narrators and translators’ (Rancière, 2011: 21). I would argue Tan Dun has systematically taken this role of ‘translator’ when it comes to music, the visual arts, China and the West.



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Acknowledgements I am grateful to Armida de la Garza for her critical reading of an earlier version of this article.

Notes 1 This is the translation used by Barbara Mittler, who contends that ‘Encountering Sorrow’ is ascribed to Qu Yuan (340–278 bc), ‘a scholar famous for his dedicated (and unrewarded) remonstrations to his emperor, who eventually commits suicide’ (Mittler, 1997: 120). 2 Zhang, Y. (Producer) and Zhang, Y. (Director) (2002) Hero [Motion Picture]. China. 3 This sound has the following features: no vibrato or a discreet vibrato; technically, it uses portamentos (the process of gliding from one note to another through all intermediate pitches) and glissandos. Its timbre is rather opaque, grave and gloomy. 4 Tan, D. (Composer) (2003) Hero, A Shang Yimou Film. (D. Tan, Conductor) On Soundtrack composed by Tan Dun. Sony Music. 5 Although the soundtrack CD includes a piece entitled ‘In the Chess Court’, played by Perlman (violin), KODO and Liu Li (guqin), it is totally different from the one played in the film, which was an improvisation. 6 Chinese chess or Xiànqí was patterned after the array of troops in the Warring States era (Li, 1998). The game may have been developed by General Han Xin in 203 bc in relation to the strategies of the art of war. In ancient China, chess players were usually accompanied by guqin music.

References Bachelard, G. (1978) L’eau et les rêves. Paris: Librerie José Corti. Bachelard, G. (1992) L’intuition de l’instant. Paris: Éditions Stock. Clarke, D. (2010) Water and Art. London: London Reaktion. Corbett, J. (2000) ‘New Music and Other Others’, in G. Born and D. Hesmondhalgh (eds), Western Music and its Others. Berkeley: University of California Press: 163–86. Csíkszentmihályi, M. (2009) Flow. New York: Harper Collins. Deleuze, G. (2009) Cinema 2. The Time Image. H. Tomlinson and R. Galeta (trans.). London: Continuum.

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Dissannayake, W. (2003) Wong Kar-Wai’s Ashes of Time. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Everett, Y. U. (2004) ‘Intercultural Synthesis in Postwar Western Art Music’, in Y. U. Everett and F. Lau (eds) Locating East Asia in Western Art Music. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press: 1–21. Feng, X. (Director) (2006) The Banquet (Legend of the Black Scorpion) [Motion Picture]. China. Garza, A. de la (2007) ‘Negotiating National Identity: Competing Readings of “Hero” by Zhang Yimou’. Media Asia 34 (3): 27–32. Hamilton, A. (2007) Aesthetics & Music. London: Continuum. IMDb (n.d.) Dun Tan. International Movie Data Base. Available online: http://www. imdb.com/name/nm0241753/ (accessed 13 December 2014). Jin, J. (2011) La musique chinoise, trans. L. Carducci. China Intercontinental Press. Keating, P. (2011) ‘Art, Accident and the Interpretation of the Modern World’, in S. Higgins (ed.) Arnheim for Film and Media Studies. New York: Routledge: 141–57. Li, A. (Director) (2000) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon [Motion Picture]. China, US. Li, David H. (1998) The Genealogy of Chess. Dublin: Premier Publishing. Liu, C.-c. (2010) A Critical History of New Music in China, trans. C. Mason. Hong Kong: The China University Press. Locke, R. P. (2009) Musical Exoticism. Images and Reflections. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Melvin, S. and J. Cai (2004) Rhapsody in Red. How Western Classical Music Became Chinese. New York: Algora Publishing. Mittler, B. (1997) Dangerous Tunes: the Politics of Chinese Music in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China Since 1949. Heidelberg: Verlag. Moeller, H.-G. (2004) Daoism Explained. From the Dream of the Butterfly to the Fishnet Allegory. Illinois: Open Court. O’Mahony, J. (2000, September 9) ‘Crossing Continents’. The Guardian. Rancière, J. (2011) The Emancipated Spectator. London: Verso. Smith, A. D. (1991) National Identity. London: Penguin. Tan, D. (n.d.) ‘Martial Arts Trilogy’. TanDunonline available online: http://www. tandunonline.com/compositions/Martial-Arts-Trilogy-first-version.html [accessed 28 October 2014]. Tan, D. (1992) ‘Orchestral Theatre II: Re’. Music Sales Classical available online: http:// www.musicsalesclassical.com/composer/work/1561/33578 [accessed 27 October 2014]. Tan, D. Composer (2003) ‘Hero, A Shang Yimou Film’, (D. Tan, Conductor). Soundtrack composed by Tan Dun. Sony Music. Tan, D. (2004) Eight Memories in Watercolor for Piano Solo. Milwaukee: G. Schirmer, Inc. Tan, D. (2004 [2002]) The Map. China: Parnassus Production.



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Tan, D. (2007 May) Excerpts from an interview with Helen Elmquist. (H. Elmquist, Interviewer). China: Parnassus Productions. Tan, D. (2008a [2003]) Paper Concerto. Shanghai: G. Schirmer, Inc. and Parnassus Productions, Inc. Tan, D. (2008b) Water Concerto. China: Parnassus Productions. Tan, D. (Director) (2010 [2009]) Earth Concerto for Stone and Ceramic Percussion and Orchestra. Shanghai Grand Theatre, Shanghai, China. Tan, D. (2010, September 21) Water Heavens. No. 3 Caogang Tan, Zhujiaojiao, Shanghai. Verevis, C. (2005) ‘Minoritarian + Cinema’, in A. Parr (ed.) The Deleuze Dictionary. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press: 168–70. Zhang, Y. (Producer) and Y. Zhang (Director) (2002) Hero [Motion Picture]. China.

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‘The Continental Melody’ – Soldiers and Japan’s Imperial Screen Chikako Nagayama

Akita International University, Japan

This chapter examines the depictions of places and people represented in the so-called continental melody – a category of popular song created by Japanese composers that generated hits during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Crafted by prominent composers such as Hattori Ryōichi and Koga Masao and leading songwriters including Saijō Yaso, the ‘tairiku’ melodī – as pronounced in Japanese – or the China melody, is considered by today’s music critics and cultural scholars as representative of Japan’s colonialist culture during WWII.1 Song titles such as ‘China Nights’ (‘Shina no yoru’), ‘Shanghai Blues’ (‘Shanhai būrūsū’), ‘Suzhou Serenade’ (‘soshū yakyoku’) and ‘Manchurian Girl’ (‘manshū musume’), and their lyrics evoke the imagery of places in the Chinese mainland. Some continental melody tunes became the theme songs of mega hit adventuremelodrama films, that are today dubbed the continental trilogy or continental goodwill trilogy starring a multilingual star actress and singer, Yamaguchi Yoshiko (1920–) and the former kabuki actor, Hasegawa Kazuo (1908–84) (Baskett, 2005, 2008). Taking place in various locations on the Chinese mainland and depicting a romance between Japanese male and Chinese female protagonists, these films celebrated Pan-Asianism and were screened in Japan and its colonies and territories (Stephenson, 1999, 2002; Tamura, 2000; DeBoer, 2004; Wang, 2007, 2012; Nagayama, 2009, 2012).2 Whereas Manchuria-born Yamaguchi was promoted as a Chinese actress, known by the names Ri Kōran3 and Li Xiang-lan, Watanabe Hamako performed these songs in the modernized Manchurian dress, qi-pao, for fans at home. In the continental trilogy films, Ri Kōran represented the goal of Pan-Asian cultural campaigns, which attempted to erase cultural and linguistic differences

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by promoting Japanese ‘imperialization’ (kōminka) among people in the colonies and occupied territories (Robertson, 1998; Gang, 2003; Wang, 2007). The films did not construct ethnic differences between Chinese and Japanese as the expression of bodily essence. Rather, the bodily similarities were appropriated when the performers of Japanese origin played the roles of Chinese men and women. The bilingual fluency and familiar appearance provided the actresses with an authentic voice, a position from which to represent sentiments and decisions of Chinese people to Japanese spectators. Conversely, communists are depicted as irrational, coercive enemies, thereby making Japan’s efforts to achieve economic and military dominance in China appear righteous. Also, Ri Kōran and Watanabe Hamako travelled in the Chinese mainland to perform for imperial army soldiers, as part of their imon activities, which literally translates as ‘comfort visits’, that were common among entertainment workers then. Some continental melody songs employ particular musical references and singing styles in an apparent gesture to forge exoticness, while others merely refer to a placename and artefacts in the Chinese mainland, Indonesia or the Philippines. In fact, the musical genres in which one would find such songs are quite diverse, ranging from blues and tango to new folk songs and military songs. For these reasons, I contend the continental melody is not a singular music category, but a music phenomenon that cuts across different genres. In this phenomenon, people’s emotional connections with songs and each other were constantly reinvented and reimagined through mimicry and repetition. The affects that realized these connections did not necessarily agree with the definition of ‘national people’ (kokumin) that the government, cultural elites and media corporations assumed. Also, the ethnic and national identity and gender of the point of view from which these songs are sung is mostly ambiguous. The lyrics of the following hit tune recorded by Watanabe Hamako and also sung by Ri Kōran, ‘China Nights,’ illustrate this ambiguity: China nights, China nights In the harbour light, in the purple night, A dream-like Chinese boat emerges. I hear the unforgettable sound of erhu China nights, nights of dream.4

This was a time when the mobility of capital, workers, goods, tourists, elites and the military was accelerated due to Japanese imperialism and colonization. So it is tempting to assume that romantic exchanges and longing depicted in these



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songs reflect people’s actual experiences of travelling and relocation. But sociohistorical conditions of music and film production, including censorship and media-sponsored ‘total mobilization of the national people’s spirit’ campaigns after the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, did not allow lyrics to directly depict romantic encounters or negative perceptions about the war. This background urges our careful reading about what ‘self ’ and the ‘other’ could denote in these songs. To help articulate the audience reception of the continental melody, this chapter critically engages with two existing theories on the subject. I term the first approach, advanced by Michael Bourdaghs (2012), as the ‘cultural transgression’ theory; the second approach as the ‘cultural oppression’ hypothesis, espoused by music historians such as Nobuo Komota (1970) and Tatsuya Tonoshita (2010), among others. In doing so, the concepts of ‘exotic’ and ‘popular’ implied in each theory will be questioned, while the historical background for the status of the continental melody and other popular songs as instances that would make these films suit Deleuze’s ‘minor’ concept (Deleuze and Guattari, 1986; Deleuze, 1989: 127) will be explored. I will discuss the limitations of these theories and provide an alternative perspective by delineating the continental melody as a music phenomenon that affects audiences’ emotions and bodies. At the end of the chapter, I highlight the fact that it was soldiers who were a main audience for these songs. Although both Ri Kōran and Watanabe Hamako sang their repertoires at military camps, most research on this subject has not seriously considered their place in this category of music and films. I hope my analysis of the continental melody will contribute to further the understanding of popular music within ‘affective politics,’ in which the demarcation of the Self and the Other are unsettled and rewritten by audience members’ bodily responses to performers’ visual and vocal appeal and to each other, apparently transcending national and geographic fixtures (Wang, 2012: 143).

Cultural politics of imitation Imitation is a primary component in the production and circulation of modern mass culture. This poses ethical and political problems when colonial relations are established through cultural commodities. When mainstream society separates ‘the art from the people’ and aesthetic forms are commercially circulated without acknowledging collective experiences of the people from

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which they emerged, the commodification does not only appropriate cultural forms but also ‘nullifies the cultural meanings’ that those forms provide for the marginalized (Hall, 1997: 31). At the same time, by signifying a cultural difference, the commodity object enables an immediate access to a distant other whose ‘exotic’ place has been already registered within one’s imagination (Ahmed, 2000: 115). In spite of the absence of the body and hierarchical order of differences that characterize scientific racism, ‘culture can also function like a nature,’ as Balibar contends, and ‘it can in particular function as a way of locking individuals and groups a priori into a genealogy, into a determination that is immutable and intangible in origin’ (1991: 22, original italics). Detached from historical processes including military invasion, labour exploitation, dehumanization or sexual assaults that the marginalized could have undergone, commoditized cultural difference is a style that one could wear, perform, eat or sing according to the users’ own mood and preferences. When Bourdaghs (2012: 168) called the continental melody an ‘instance of counterfeit culture’ in his book chapter, ‘Japan’s Orient in Song and Dance,’ he would have had this issue of cultural appropriation in mind. He explored significant parallels between the continental melody and the representation of black bodies in post-slavery America – in particular, in the blackface minstrelsy shows in New York theatres in the 1840s and 1850s as well as in Hollywood films in the 1920s and 1930s (Bourdaghs, 2012: 169). In the minstrelsy shows, marginalized white Americans such as Irish and Jewish actors presented exaggerated stereotypes of African-Americans. While noting ‘enormous cultural and historical differences’ in a generic manner, the American colour code of black and white provides him with a lens to decipher the power dynamics between the Japanese and the Chinese that he considers implied in the continental melodies (Bourdaghs, 2012: 169). For Bourdaghs, parallels between the blackface performance and the continental melody are namely centred around the transgression of the ‘colour line’ and their significance in the development of national cultures; the continental melody, according to him, ‘functioned […] as a technique for performing into being Japan’s own status as a civilizing power, as the honorary whites of East Asia,’ as in the same way that the minstrelsy shows were central to the establishment of American identity (Bourdaghs, 2012: 169–70). In this way, the author rhetorically marks the boundary of the unique music genre and privileges the Japan-China binary to make sense of audience pleasure. This binary is further strengthened through his assumption of pre-established national boundaries reproduced by the audience through



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listening to continental melody songs: ‘enjoying this music meant literally to internalize it, allowing the rhythms and melodies of the songs to reorganize the listener’s body at the most intimate level. At the same time, paradoxically, the exoticizing elements that characterized the genre solicited an act of externalization, a pushing away of the music as alien and foreign’ (Bourdaghs, 2012: 169). His analysis schematizes the structure of feeling mediated by popular culture at the time and draws our attention to the ethics of representation in a seemingly banal subject matter, popular music. I agree that the symbolic violence implied in performing cross-ethnicity must be critically interrogated. However, I am concerned that the comparison of the minstrelsy shows with the continental melody is misleading, precisely because it shifts one’s attention away from violent aspects of blackface performance and ‘nullifies the cultural meanings’ (Hall, 1997: 31) for those who were derogated by whites’ staging of blackness. One thing to note here is that blackface performance was grotesque figuration and disfiguration that erased black experience, as Susan Gubar (1997: xiv) points out, while continental melodies were performed by attractive star singers as foregrounding romantic or nostalgic feelings associated with remote places. While white male bodies in racial masquerade gave particular meanings to African-American ethnicity (Gubar, 1997: xx), the female bodies of Ri Kōran and Watanabe Hamako attracted audiences and reified the concept of the Great Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. Also importantly, stereotypical minstrel-show characters, such as the exaggerated dandy Zip Coon and the slow plantation labourer Jim Crow, made the white audience laugh, but continental melody singers were not aiming to provoke laughter (Lemons, 1977). Indeed, both female singers trained as opera singers in their youths, thus the quality of their singing was genuine rather than caricature. The audience’s physical and emotional experience would have been quite distinct from one another in the minstrel shows and the continental melody. Therefore, I would assert the comparison of racial politics in different national realms demands the author’s careful approach to the operating terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’ regarding racism and racial identification, gender/sexuality and other power dynamics within a given text and wider contexts. Bourdaghs’s parallel draws the reader’s attention to the notions of Japan’s national culture and listeners’ transgression across the ‘colour line’ between two cultures, which he identifies as Japanese and Chinese. While this interpretative framework mirrors an actual event – the Japanese military’s invasion of the Chinese mainland –, the binary inadvertently suspends questions about

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trajectories and lived identities of music content, performers and listeners. As Malcolm Chapman (1994) illustrates, a certain music genre maintains its categorical identity due to its ‘exotic’ status shaped vis-à-vis dominant culture, such as Celtic music established against Anglo-Saxon or French. At the same time, the content of Celtic music is far from steady, but so diverse and flexible as to allow people’s participation in new compositions and performance. Along the same lines, I would propose to consider the categorical formation of Japan’s national culture without assuming essential traits about culture and people in music-making. As Tonoshita (2010) among others has pointed out, Japanese popular music has a root in the government’s top-down introduction of modern European music primarily through school education in the late nineteenth century. School children learned to walk with military songs in order to familiarize themselves with rhythm patterns of Western tunes. Since then, Western music – either popular or classical – was considered to be part of high culture and its acquisition a sign of ‘social progress’ (Mōri, 2009). The leading composer Hattori Ryōichi, strove to incorporate elements of jazz and blues – also considered to be ‘Western’ – into popular songs, but these musical influences arrived to Japan’s audience via Shanghai, where Europeans and Americans had settled after the Qing Dynasty’s defeat in the First Opium War in the mid-nineteenth century. Another prominent hit-maker, Koga Masao, moved to Incheon, Korea, as a child with his family. He spent his later childhood in Seoul before moving to Tokyo to attend Meiji University and join a mandolin club. This upbringing in colonial Korea exposed him to a variety of musical trends from Euro-American popular tunes to Asian continental folk music (Mōri, 2009: 220–3). Koga has made an incomparable contribution to the establishment of enka, a genre of nostalgic ballads. His compositions, known as the ‘Koga melody’, have become such a common fixture in popular culture that they have often been called ‘Japan’s soul’ (‘nihon no kokoro’), obscuring Koga’s rather hybrid musical background. What is equally significant is that musicians, audiences and consumers of Korean origin took part in music scenes that were either predominantly Korean or Japanese in the imperial metropolis in the early twentieth century (de Ferranti, 2013). Japan’s self-entitlement for modernity in Asia, which underpinned nationalist ideology and cultural assimilation (‘kōminka’) policy during WWII, figuratively ‘forgot’ trajectories beyond the geographic confinements of Japan, namely, music production and reception via Korea, China and AfricanAmericans (Gilroy, 1993). By postulating Japanese as the primary ethnic



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identity that music listeners are supposed to belong to, one would reinforce the myth of a homogeneous national culture. Along with imitation, repetition is a key characteristic of modern mass culture and popular music created therein: circular patterns within a tune as well as one’s repetitive listening to the same song are important components of pleasure in music consumption (Middleton, 1983); the notion of repetition is also eminent in the structure of mass cultural production, in which a copy without the original, or the simulacrum, could evoke ‘real’ experience (Jameson, 1979: 135; Baudrillard, 1995). The concept of ‘repetition’ allows us to acknowledge the implication of modern capitalist production in the Chinese mainland reflected in the continental melody: Watanabe Hamako and Ri Kōran covered Shanghai actress Zhou Xuan’s ‘Hé Rì Jūn Zài Lái’ (‘When will you return’), which became a major hit in Japan. Meanwhile, the dresses they wore on stage, qipao, were initially modified from Manchu men’s long robes to fit in with Western style and were popularized by the fashion industry in Republican China after being adopted as a schoolgirls’ uniform there in the 1920s. While it was a sign of empowered woman with education who enjoyed a public life, the same image was adopted in advertisements to sell medicine and fabric (Edwards, 2007: 49–51; de la Garza and Ding, 2013: 58–9). Probably because she was accustomed to the style, having attended school with Chinese classmates in Beijing, Yamaguchi/Ri Kōran also dressed in qipaos ‘off stage’: her memoir describes a Japanese immigration police officer’s reproach towards her wearing the dress and speaking in Mandarin with her colleague when she showed her Japanese passport upon entering Japan (Yamaguchi and Fujiwara, 1987: 117–18).5 This cycle of repetition continues across national boundaries, as does the movement of cultural commodities. Composed by Takeoka Nobuyuki with lyrics by Saijō Yaso, the creation of ‘Shina no Yoru’ (‘China Nights’ 1938), sung by both Watanabe and Ri was inspired by the French chanson ‘Nuit de Chine’ in 1922. Although the government discouraged its promotion at the outset, it became a major hit since Watanabe Hamako repeatedly played it on radio (Morimoto, 1975: 138). The following year, a film with the same title was co-produced by the Manchuria Film Association and Tōhō, starring Ri Kōran and Hasegawa Kazuo, featuring the theme song performed by Ri Kōran. Soshū Yakyoku was composed for the same film in 1940, and later recorded by Watanabe Hamako. Furthermore, the same song and film were used by their opponents as the armed conflict continued. China Nights and Vow in the Desert

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were among twenty Japanese entertainment films which the American anthropologist Ruth Benedict analysed, in collaboration with the Office of Strategic Services, to discuss the psychology of the Japanese (Kent, 1995: 108, 117). It is said that the USSR army played the record of ‘China Nights’ when they were facing the Japanese Army across a river in Manchuria, in order to elicit their longing for home (Morimoto, 1975: 139). The song, ‘China Nights’, was popular among the American GIs and they brought back recordings as a souvenir during the Occupation Period (Waseda, 2004; Nagahara, 2013). If we cannot assume fixed borders dividing the internal and the external in music performance or content, it is difficult to distinguish the so-called continental melodies through what appears to be the element of exotic and foreign. I would rather suggest that music be read not as a text but as a phenomenon: in a music phenomenon, I argue, audience members do not internalize meanings and feelings that exist externally to them, but music shapes ‘the “surfaces” of individual and collective bodies,’ much as emotions do (Ahmed, 2004: 2). Also, I want to think about music as a mode of a ‘becoming’: the Deleuzian concept. Music’s contact with a body simultaneously creates sensation/vibration of the body: as ears and other body surfaces vibrate, other organs also vibrate. My body may become harder, softer, faster or slower all at the same time upon the contact (Williams, 2003: 6–7; Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). In the moment

Figure 9  From the film Shina no Yoru (China Nights, 1940), dir, Fushimi Osamu, Tōhō, 1940.



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of contact, my body would spontaneously move and shift, in response to the sensation/vibration, but it could also move and shift in anticipation of forthcoming sensation. That is, my body might not move exactly on the beat, on the sound – it could move and shift on and off the beat, on and off the sound. The notions of music shaping bodily surfaces and music as a mode of ‘becoming’ are further articulated when the relationship of mimicry between Ri Kōran, Watanabe Hamako and their audiences are considered. According to Washitani Hana, some young female students responded to Ri Kōran’s great popularity by changing their appearance to mimic her: they imitated her eyebrows with their make up or gave each other pseudo-Chinese nicknames (Yamaguchi et al., 2001: 270). Preceding Ri Kōran’s first appearance in the Tōhō-Manchuria Film Association co-production films, Watanabe Hamako’s first hit song, ‘Wasurecha iya yo’ (‘Don’t forget me’), was released by Nippon Columbia in June 1936, and became so popular that people often recited the last phrase in the song, ‘wasurecha iyayo, wasure naidene’ (please don’t forget me). The phrase even became a meme or catch phrase which people jokingly referred to in conversation. People reciting a song lyric without hearing the song illustrates music as a ‘becoming’. The government finally banned the song three months after its initial release, when other record companies published songs with similarly coquettish titles, such as ‘Kawaigattene’, (‘Please me darling’) ‘Omoidashite chodai yo’ (‘Remember me’) and ‘Watashino anata yo’ (‘I am yours’). The government claimed that these songs’ lyrics evoked excessive sensuality, comparing them to prostitutes. It was after this sanction that Watanabe Hamako recorded ‘Shina no yoru’ (‘China Nights’), that became part of her repertoire among other continental melody songs that followed. This was also the time when the government strengthened censorship regulations after the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out, making it increasingly difficult to publish entertainment content without touching upon themes regarding China or tairiku. Even if the implication of romantic encounters and intimacy in songs were generally censored, today’s music critics argue that similar content could be permitted as long as their title and lyrics somehow referred to the Chinese mainland. While employing instruments and singing styles that connote China, the song ‘Manchurian Girl’ in 1937 was about a young woman’s longing for her fiancé, evoking Watanabe Hamako’s ‘Wasurecha iyayo’ which had already been banned. This exemplifies the interplay between censorship and music production from which the ‘cultural oppression hypothesis’ is drawn: some music historians assert that the so-called continental

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melodies were born out of music companies’ attempts to secure their venues, in the face of censorship, by addressing popular sentiment wanting to break free from daily concerns and sufferings (Komota, 1970). It is not difficult to imagine that a romantic song, such as ‘China Nights’, without a particular ethnic marker or gendered point-of-view, yet inscribing the mobility of a modern individual, fascinated audiences whose lives were increasingly dominated by the military. But did the government entirely suppress people’s sentiments in their war mobilization effort? Did the popularity of the continental melody emerge outside of the cultural politics that the wartime regime hinged upon? In what follows, I will critically examine assumptions behind this ‘cultural oppression hypothesis’.

Censorship, popularity and sentiment Broadly defined, the term ‘popularity’ indicates an expressed support and admiration by many people. However, music can be used in the reverse way, as a political and aesthetic means to foster a sense of homogeneity among an audience and generate the imaginary public that reaches beyond this actual audience. In researching popular music and film, it is crucial to distinguish a song’s ‘popular’ status. That is, a song’s public exists in a specific space and time ‘by virtue of being addressed’ (Warner, 2005: 67, original italics), but a public’s embodied engagement with music texts can be distinct from the imagined totality of the ‘public’ which involve individuals who had no access to the same song. ‘The cultural oppression’ hypothesis sheds light upon this paradox: when a government, such as Japan’s wartime regime, tries to narrow the gap between a popular song’s public and an imagined national community by implementing a kind of public cultural policy, such object-oriented utilization of culture would interfere with the sense of voluntary participation and attraction underpinning the notion of ‘popular’. In order to further tease out this hypothesis, I would like to compare the particular formation of ‘popular’ in this theory with the concept of ‘minor’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1986; Deleuze, 1989: 217). In Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari assert that a minor literature uses ‘deterritorialized language, appropriate for strange and minor uses’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1986: 17) and the writer’s marginalized status allows ‘the possibility to express another possible community and to forge the means for



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another consciousness and another sensibility’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1986: 17). I do not contend that it was the music creators’ geographic and linguistic displacement or racial ethnic subordination that constituted their ‘minor’ status, as conceptualized by Deleuze and Guattari. Rather, it was the wartime regime’s cultural policy that influenced the relationship between ‘popular’ and ‘minor’. More precisely, the ‘cultural oppression’ hypothesis asserts that the ‘minor’ status of popular songs and entertainment films was built when censorship measures were strengthened according to the idea of ‘total mobilization of the national people’s spirit’ promoted by the government during the Second Sino-Japanese War (Nagahara, 2013). In support of the idea of ‘total mobilization’, critics attacked particular songs and films, including Watanabe Hamako’s ‘Wasurecha iyayo’ (Don’t forget me) and the film China Nights, as a disruption of the national spirit during a state of emergency, while other critics and film producers defended the same works as a reflection of what the masses (‘taishū’) truly desired. It seems plausible that this ‘total mobilization’ paradigm reinforced a particular place for the continental melody along with films featuring this music, whose main themes were romantic and nuanced sentiments. But the ‘cultural oppression’ hypothesis takes for granted a causal relation between censorship and people’s need – it assumes that wartime censorship almost banned sentimental expression in popular entertainment, leading to audiences’ craving for such content, which ended up being supplied by the continental melody. In what follows, I will look into the wider socio-historical context of film and record production, ‘total mobilization’ and censorship in order to scrutinize this relation. My examination will reveal that the government was keen on the use of music and film for the mobilization of public support of the military expansion, and people’s favourite tunes were occasionally the outcome of these efforts. I will also show that audiences’ interest in modern entertainment media grew with the country’s engagement in the war. In short, there is not much evidence to uphold the ‘cultural oppression’ hypothesis at all. Simultaneously with government-led industrial development and a series of wars – i.e. First Sino-Japan War, the Russo-Japan War and World War I – in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,6 new forms of popular entertainment were introduced. Radio, recorded music, magazines and films introduced via Japanese and foreign merchants among others, gradually became mass-produced and accessible for the middle-class public. François-Constant Girel and Gabriel Veyre, sent by the Lumière Company, travelled across the

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country and screened European imports and locally taken ethnographic films in Kyoto and Osaka, introducing the viewing experience of motion pictures to audiences in the late 1890s (Mitsuda, 1995). In 1904–5, films documenting marching soldiers, wounded bodies and landscapes at the frontline of the Russo-Japanese War constituted 80 per cent of the films shown at the time, and underpinned a growing expectation in audiences at the time that cinema would reference the real (Gerow, 2010: 48; High, 2003: 3–7). The first radio programme was aired in 1925 and the domestic record company Columbia was launched in 1927, followed by Victor Company of Japan and Polydor Japan. It does not seem there was an established genre of modern music or entertainment that cut across class cleavages. These media borrowed expressive styles from each other to establish a combination of sound, visual images and narrative patterns, successfully mobilizing an audience’s emotional and intellectual engagement with entertainment texts (Satō, 2002). The circulation of placenames in music titles enhanced their intertextuality. During the 1930s, it was common to produce and sell songs by recycling titles, and musical elements by replacing placenames in their titles. Along with the names of Japanese cities, placenames in China appear in this cycle of repetition. For example, a love song, ‘Dōtonbori kōshinkyoku’ (‘Dōtonbori march’) was first sung by the actress Okada Yoshiko at a play performed across Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe in 1928. Dōtonbori is a placename in downtown Osaka, and its popularity soon led to the production of the film, Dōtonbori kōshinkyoku. Meanwhile, Mizoguchi Kenji’s 1929 film Tokyo Kōshinkyoku was produced with a theme song with the same title. Not only did the song imitate the preceding example by name, it also foregrounded a modern consumerist life that was only indicated in Dōtonbori. The lyrics catalogued jazz, bar, dancer, café, cinema, high-rise, subway and bus, as well as free romance among youths, so-called mobo and moga, meeting in Ginza, Tokyo, and in doing so, sold over 200,000 copies. These songs’ great popularity led to even further reproduction of ‘kōshinkyoku’ (march), including ‘Kamata kōshinkyoku’ (1929), ‘Asakusa kōshinkyoku’ (1930) and ‘Umi no kōshinkyoku’. In 1932, ‘Manshū kōshinkyoku’ was launched by the Asahi Shinbun (newspaper) company as part of an entertainment campaign to support the Japanese Imperial Army in Manchuria. The following year, the title was used for a film produced by Shōchiku. In contrast to its romantic precedents, this song aimed at public education and was centred upon soldiers’ efforts and their alleged contribution to the ‘peace of East Asia’.



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When the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in July 1937, film was arguably the most widely appealing form of entertainment in Japan, surpassing radio, which was mainly dedicated to news programmes, or records, and tended to appeal to the middle class (Furukawa, 2003). Film theatres were concentrated in urban centres across the country, and attendance was high: 562 domestic and 134 Euro-American films were screened, and one individual would have seen three films a year on average in 1936 (Furukawa, 2003: 19). Audiences however were stratified by class: wealthier, intellectual people tended to enjoy Euro-American films, while the lower-income audiences preferred domestic films such as samurai action films, whose expression of heroism was quite different from that of the male protagonists in imported dramas (Satō, 1984). Occasionally, a domestic film, such as Aizen Katsura (dir: Nomura Hiromasa, 1938), became a record-breaking hit, cutting across the class cleavage. The outbreak of war in July triggered the tightening of censorship on popular song records, and record companies increasingly focused their production on songs involving war-related themes or ‘hijō jikyoku’ (wartime emergency) (Tonoshita, 2010: 49). The concept of ‘total mobilization of the national spirit’ became a focus of cultural and media policies in September 1937, followed by the ‘Patriot March’ (aikoku kōshin kyoku) campaign launched by the Cabinet Information Bureau towards the end of the year. They announced the selection criteria for lyrics as a contest so the public would participate in song-making: ‘i) a beautiful, bright and brave march; ii) the content should praise the true image of Japan and symbolize the everlasting life and ideal of the Empire; iii) national people, regardless of age or sex, can always sing the song at the time of peace or war’ (Tonoshita, 2010: 82, my translation). The information bureau, university professors and popular poets took part in the selection process. The criteria for the composition contest for the ‘Patriotic March’ were announced after the best work was selected among 57,579 lyrics sent from the public. The censor, Ogawa Chikagorō, who dealt with a large part of record censorship at the Home Ministry, along with music critics and composers, publicly supported this government effort as vital for the implementation of a ‘national people song’ (kokumin ka). Yamada Kōsaku, the influential composer and conductor who popularized European symphonies among Japanese audiences, commented that ‘it is a great progress that the government has got the idea of producing a national song that national people could enjoy singing permanently’.7 This style of ‘national people song’ contest was mimicked by newspaper companies

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soon afterwards: for example, the Asahi Newspaper held the lyrics contest for the song, ‘Kōgun taishō no uta’ (‘Song of the imperial army’s great victory’) at the end of November, aiming to glamorize the army’s advance towards Nanjing, even before the military headquarters officially announced their plan to attack the southern capital of the Chinese National Party.8 Through the song contests, media companies competed against each other to exploit wars as an ample opportunity to create cross-media campaigns, involving theatre, record and film productions. National people’s song contests had mixed results in terms of popularity. Some songs were considered preachy and did not lead to successful record sales. But songs such as ‘Camp Song’ (‘roei no uta’) and ‘If I Go Away to the Sea’ (‘umi yukaba’), that skilfully interwove nuanced feelings in the lyrics and composition, became people’s favourites. ‘If I Go Away to the Sea’ remains popular among present-day Japanese patriots who have no direct experience of WWII (Yesterday is Now, dir. Rumalean, 2002). Its lyrics are: Across the seas, there are corpses in the water. Across the mountains, there are corpses in the grass. We shall die at the side of our emperor. I shall not turn back. (Manabe, 2013: 101)

Yamaguchi Yoshiko’s memoir notes that, like the Chinese actress Ri Kōran, she sang ‘If I Go Away to the Sea’ along with continental melodies for Japanese Imperial Army soldiers in a battle zone beside the Yellow River. The censor Ogawa Chikagorō himself was not against emotional expressions employed for wartime mobilization. He states in a music magazine article: ‘even in a time of war, human sentiments, melancholy and even love’ could continue to exist as themes in popular songs, ‘so long as they do not lose a sense of cleanness and wholesomeness’ (Nagahara, 2013: 66).

Presence and absence of soldiers In the ‘total mobilization of the national spirit’ campaign, Japanese Imperial Army soldiers stationed in the Chinese mainland were symbolically positioned as an object of children’s and female adults’ selfless devotion from the homeland (naichi). At school, children were made to write letters and send gift bags (imon bukuro) to anonymous soldiers whom they did not know personally.



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Local women’s groups were organized under the leadership of the Women’s Association for National Protection (kokubō fujinkai) and women worked hard to sew special belts (sen’nin bari) for soldiers. A thousand women were to provide a stitch on a belt, so once a soldier put it on, it could magically protect his body from gunshots. Meanwhile, soldiers’ personal correspondences going outside of their camps were censored, so the expression of intimate feelings and vulnerability was never revealed. Upon entering the army, soldiers were prohibited from speaking in their dialects and made to give up attachment to their family and community. Also under the emperor system, the physical and emotional bond between the mother and her children was supposed to be given up so the mother was raising ‘the emperor’s babies’ (ten’no no sekishi) on behalf of him (Ohinata, 1995: 202; Kanō, 2002). Meanwhile, military songs promoted through the ‘total mobilization’ campaign emphasized soldiers’ courageous efforts, heroic triumph and admirable brotherhood – they were the embodiment of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005). But their robberies, brutal violence and sexual assaults upon non-Japanese civilians were not revealed in public, except glorified or fictionalized accounts (Matsuoka, 2002; Wakabayashi, 2007). In contrast to restrained emotional expressions allowed by the image of soldiers that was constructed at the time, memoirs reveal that they were active listeners of songs filled with yearning and nostalgia – and they could occasionally help to endorse them. The Nippon Columbia’s release of ‘Separation Blues’ (‘Wakareno uta’, 1937), composed by Hattori Ryōichi, was followed by the Marco Polo Bridge incident shortly after, and the record company was not able to advertise this song containing elements that could be labelled as ‘decadent’ (taihai teki) by government and patriotic critics: Through the open window, I see the harbour, Lighting in the Meriken wharf The night breeze, the sea breeze Bringing romantic air Where will the boat leave for today Sobbing heart Fleeting romance Dancing with the blues With sorrow. (my translation)

Without much publicity, however, soldiers stationed in the Chinese mainland began singing the song in their camps (Yamaguchi and Fujiwara, 1987: 143).

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The song also became a favourite among Japanese expatriates; jazz musicians repeatedly performed it upon audiences’ requests in Dailen, then located in the State of Manchuria (Hattori, 1993: 150). This popularity abroad influenced the song’s perception back home and it became an unprecedented hit. A broadcast of soldiers singing ‘Separation Blues’ from Hankou, northern China, was the first time the song was heard on radio. Even after the record was officially banned, the song remained popular among soldiers and the singer Awaya Noriko could not refuse soldiers’ requests to sing it when she visited camps. Awaya recalls soldiers quietly listening with so much concentration that she ‘could have heard a pin drop’ (Yamaguchi and Fujiwara, 1987: 143). In this circulation of emotions, from home to abroad and then home again, ‘affective economies’ are clearly at work, mediating the ‘relationship between the psychic and the social, and between the individual and the collective’ (Ahmed, 2004: 119). Like school children’s letters and thousand-stitch belts, the performance of popular songs materialized ‘us’, a community of people. Moreover, popular songs could allow a distribution of various emotions that were not allowed via the idea of ‘total mobilization of the national spirit’. Although not an apparent political struggle, soldiers’ efforts to establish ‘Separation Blues’, filled with sorrow and nostalgia, as a signature song to reflect their feelings reveals where ‘the private affair merges with the social – or political – immediate’, echoing with Deleuze’s notion of ‘minor’ cinema and literature (Deleuze, 1989: 218). Located at the Yokohama harbour, ‘Separation Blues’ was not a continental melody per se, but these tunes contained common emotional elements – such as longing and sadness – and scenery evoking travel and separation. For example, the lyrics of ‘Suzhou Serenade’, contain phrases such as ‘willow trees are weeping’, ‘without knowing what will happen tomorrow’, and ‘the moon is filled with tears’. These feelings exemplify an attitude criticized by the authorities and critics as war-weariness (‘en-sen’). Also, though indicating a romantic relationship, this song does not clearly show a gender or ethnic point of view, similar to ‘Separation Blues’ or ‘China Nights’.

Final thoughts As I have shown above, singers of popular records, such as Ri Kōran, Watanabe Hamako and Awaya Noriko, played a vital part in the flow of emotions.



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Furthermore, my analysis has indicated that the continental melody as a music phenomenon that shaped people’s emotions and bodily surfaces could have been linked with ‘affective labour’ (Weeks, 2007), in which women and children have been significant actors to reproduce families and communities in the past and present. I would also maintain that such a comfortable, familiar home projected via affective economies is a myth, which the construction of national borders has been based upon. A home often reveals strangeness, in spite of discursive efforts to secure its stable place in our imagination. In ‘Home and Away: Narratives of Migration and Estrangement’, Sara Ahmed states: Interestingly, it is the ‘real’ home, the very space from which one imagines oneself to have originated, and in which one projects the self as homely and original, that is the most unfamiliar. […] It is through the very loss of a past […] that the ‘we’ comes to be written as Home. (Ahmed, 1999: 330)

The following remark by Motoshima Hitoshi, the former mayor of Nagasaki, illustrates a rupture within home from the eyes of a soldier: When I returned from the military, I felt that the younger generation was different while observing them. We accepted the war as an ideology – or a destiny that we could not resist, and went to the military. But they didn’t. Perhaps their parents were killed by air raids or they experienced sufferings such as food shortage [that characterized Japanese experience] at home (‘jūgo’). But something in them was slightly different [from us, the war generation].’ (Motoshima, 2000: 15, my translation)

This account suggests that the soldier’s embodied memory at the frontline marks an irreconcilable gap within a national community, a disruption in affective economies. Nuanced feelings in continental melodies appear to have fostered a sense of intimate community, an alternative to military songs promoted with the idea of ‘total mobilization of national spirit’. Therefore, the concept of ‘minor’ can be applied to describe their place for the Japanese audience. The significance of these songs can be further investigated by closely analysing how they are interwoven within melodrama-adventure film texts featuring Ri Kōran for particular dramatic effects. In relation to affective economies and their rupture, it would be useful to speculate on how actors’ bodies and popular songs work together to underpin audience members’ ‘suture’ (Koch, 1985). The concept of ‘suture’ refers to the work of a film viewer who negotiates the gap between the projected image

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and one’s desire to find a place in the film narrative. When a viewer projects an ideal and faultless self-‘image’ upon a star actor as if looking into a mirror, the viewer at the same time negotiates the perceived gap between the actor (ideal and whole) and the ‘I’ (partial and ‘lacking’), while viewing the film. Empathic response is another way for a spectator to manage the cognitive distance with the image. The ‘operative mode’ of melodrama is, Linda Williams (2001: 15) asserts, not simply a powerful force to entice audience sentiment. More precisely, it lies in the shaping of audience empathy in response to protagonists’ joys and pains expressed through their bodies, which in return constructs an affective community of ‘us’. As Yuan Gao (2002) demonstrates, places in China, Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan became available as destinations for tourists as the Japanese Imperial Army encroached on the Chinese mainland. Japan’s interest in Manchuria was due to its proximity to the USSR, while immigration to the State of Manchuria was promoted as liberation from traditional families and communities (Aiba, 1996; Nagayama, 2009). The frequent use of particular placenames, such as Shanghai, Suzhou and Manchuria, is not inseparable from these contexts. From this perspective, the ‘cultural oppression’ hypothesis is misleading because war was not interruption for the production of this music phenomenon but a necessary condition. If imperialism, colonization and modernity are inextricable from the development of modern music as de Ferrari and Tokita proclaim (2013), then music’s impact on society – at peace or war – should be articulated by locating it within the circuits of affective labour and economies, whose expansion has been, if partially, underpinned by military operations.

Notes 1 The name order of Japanese and Chinese actors, singers, critics, film directors and politicians follows that of the original language: the given name follows the family name. 2 The continental trilogy films include Song of the White Orchid (Byakuran no uta, 1939, dir. Watanabe Kunio), China Nights (Shina no yoru, 1940, dir. Fushimi Osamu) and Vow in the Desert (Nessa no chikai, 1940, dir. Watanabe Kunio), co-produced by Tōhō and the Manchuria Film Association. The films were followed by Suzhou Nights (Soshū no yoru, 1941, dir. Nomura Hiromasa), produced by



3

4 5

6 7 8

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Shōchiku, which employed a similar melodrama matrix to the trilogy: they adapted a dialectical narrative form of action-adventure and melodrama. Two intertwined forces created storylines: an action-centred Japanese male seeks to bring ‘modern civilization’ to China as a civil engineer, sailor, or doctor, while an active Chinese female seeks the man to fulfil her longing. In the first three films, Ri Kōran co-starred with Hasegawa Kazuo: in the latter, with Sano Shūichi. Although this is not a proper Mandarin or Cantonese pronunciation but a Japanese transliteration of Chinese characters, I describe the actress’s name as Ri Kōran in this essay in order to imply a particular hybridity of her performance. Some fans suspected her mixed ethnic origin of Chinese and Japanese (Washitani, 2001: 22–3). I also acknowledge the linguistic limitations imposed by research material written primarily in English and Japanese. Translation by Nagahara (2013: 64). Instances in which Yamaguchi/Ri Kōran wore qipao illustrate her stage persona merging with her personality, making her cross-ethnic ‘masquerade’ and ‘self-expression’ undistinguishable. Even though Yamaguchi Yoshiko disclosed her Japanese nationality after Japan’s surrender to the Allies, she continued to appear in qipao in front of the public and close friends, except on special occasions when she was commissioned to promote kimono (Duus, 2003: 46–84). To paraphrase, it is misleading to postulate her ‘true’ ethnicity (i.e. Japanese identity) as being hidden under qipao. Conscription of all able-bodied males aged twenty was first instituted in 1873. Tokyo Nichinichi Newspaper, 16 November 1937; cited in Tonoshita (2010: 60), my translation. Nanking was central for Sun Yatsen and the Chinese National Party’s envisioning of modern industrial development. The economic boom had begun in several major cities in China a decade earlier and the first national integrative economic plan was designed by Sun Yatsen in 1935. The conquest and massacre of civilians in December 1937 by the Japanese military, also known as the Rape of Nanking, demolished this plan (Kirby, 2000).

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Wang, Y. (2007) ‘Screening Asia: Passing, Performative Translation, and Recognition’. Positions 15 (2): 319–43. Wang, Y. (2012) ‘Affective Politics and the Legend of Yamaguchi Yoshiko/LiXianglan’, in R. King, C. Poulton and K. Endo (eds) Sino-Japanese Transculturation: From the Late Nineteenth Century to the end of the Pacific War. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books: 43–165. Warner, M. (2005) Publics and Counterpublics. Zone Books. Waseda, M. (2004) ‘Looking Both Ways: GI Songs and Musical Exoticism in Post-World War II Japan’. Yearbook for Traditional Music 36: 144–64. Washitani, H. (2001) ‘Ri Kōran nichigeki ni arawaru: utau daitouwa kyoei ken’ [‘Ri Kōran appears in the Japan Theatre – The Singing Performance of Great East Asian Sphere’], in Yomota (ed.) Ri Kōran to higashi Ajia [Ri Kōran and East Asia]. Tokyo: Tokyo University Press: 21–56. Weeks, K. (2007) ‘Life Within and Against Work: Affective Labor, Feminist Critique, and Post-Fordist Politics’. Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization 7 (1): 233–49. Williams, J. (2003) Gilles Deleuze’s ‘Difference and Repetition’: A Critical Introduction and Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Williams, L. (2001) Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O. J. Simpson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Yamaguchi Y. and Fujiwara, S. (1987) Ri Kōran: Watashi no hansei [Li Xiang-lan: The First Half of my Life] Tokyo: Shinchōsha. Yamaguchi, Y., Momma, T., Ishida, M., Washitani, H., Iwano, Y., Makino, M. and Yomota, I. (2001) ‘Kyōdōtougi: Eigashi no nakano Ri Kōran’ [‘Roundtable Discussion: Ri Kōran in the Film History’], in I. Yomota (ed.) Ri Kōran to higashi Ajia [Ri Kōran and East Asia]. Tokyo: Tokyo University Press: 255–74. Yesterday is Now (2002) [Film] Produced, directed and edited by Celine Rumalean. Vancouver, BC: Moving Images Distribution. Yomota, I. ed. (2001) Ri Kōran to higashi Ajia [Ri Kōran and East Asia]. Tokyo: Tokyo University Press.

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Collective Nostalgia and Anxiety in Korean Film Music: Im Kwǒnt’aek’s Use of P’ansori in Sǒp’yǒnje Jooyeon Rhee

Introduction P’ansori is a traditional Korean music genre, which emerged in the seventeenth century. It is typically performed by a vocalist and a drummer, with the vocalist using a combination of song, narration and gesture. Im Kwǒnt’aek’s film Sǒp’yǒnje (1993), on p’ansori singers’ lifetime devotion to the attainment of artistic sublimity, spurred a new interest among Korean audiences in this indi­ genous form of music, allowing them to rediscover the beauty of long-forgotten traditional Korean music like p’ansori. Sǒp’yǒnje was the first film produced in Korea to draw more than one million people to theatres in Seoul alone, a phenomenal record that was not challenged until 1999 (KoBiz).1 Im’s masterful interweaving of Korean music with beautiful cinematography evokes powerful feelings of loss and nostalgia. And these feelings are intensified by the story of three wandering performers whose life trajectories reminded Korean audiences of their shared history. Koreans had taken a long and arduous historical journey in the twentieth century: the thirty-five years of colonial rule and the Cold War had left damaging legacies such as the Korean War and the subsequent division between North and South; and while the state-led economic development under authoritarian regimes in South Korea raised the living standard for Koreans, the cost was heavily suppressed freedom of expression for more than three decades. The once ‘lost’ sound of p’ansori, together with the serene rural landscape in the film, touched the audiences with a sense of familiarity with the not-so-distant past, through which they identified their cultural selves in a national context.

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The emphasis on locality in the form of p’ansori and the rural landscape that was the film’s setting can be understood as part of a nationalistic fervour that appealed to Korean audiences; or it can be regarded as a self-orientalizing strategy that sought the gaze of international audiences. ‘Locality’, in fact, was promoted in public media as a cultural signature against the wind of globalization. The aesthetic and cultural meaning of Im’s melodious portrayal of the Korean rural landscape, however, is much more complex than what these views offer. As Julian Stringer’s (2002) analysis of Sǒp’yǒnje demonstrates, the film’s expectation and understanding of locality is interpreted differently depending on the audiences’ social and national backgrounds. The replacement of the authentic p’ansori singing with the ‘traditional’ music performed on flute and synthesizer at the climax of the film, for example, confused American audiences whose expectation of experiencing local aesthetics was suddenly interrupted at an important moment, whereas it was taken naturally by Korean audiences (Stringer, 2002: 164). Stringer’s analysis in turn leads us to question how global political and economic environments influence the reconfiguration and the use of cultural heritage in non-Western countries. A ‘locality’ becomes such only when it possesses qualities deemed to be different from those that are global. In other words, ‘locality’ does not possess a perennial quality, but is ‘discovered’ through the articulation of cultural forms that are relevant to spectators’ social lives at the time of reception. Sǒp’yǒnje provided a moment of discovery where once erased and forgotten stories of people could return to the present, recalling the times during which ordinary people lived through the tide of colonial history, the Korean War, political oppression, and the intense capitalist development. It is in the discovery of themselves as ‘ordinary’, I argue, that Korean audiences recognized their collective identity through sounds and images. The film, as a cultural work, is ‘ordinary’ in a sense that it embodies continuity of ways of life common to all; yet it appealed to the audiences as ‘ordinary’ through the aid of its creative components. This is what Raymond Williams means when he contends that ‘culture is ordinary’ for its embodiment of ‘a whole way of life’ (2007: 93). In the film, Im made possible the appearance of the ordinary people who were marginalized in the representation politics in South Korean history: the presentation of wandering travellers’ paths to perfect their art is Im’s attempt to give voice back to those who have not been heard. The process of ‘discovering’ the voice of the marginalized so as to make them speak as subjects, not as the subjected, is what Deleuze identified as minor



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cinema – a cinema which not only acknowledges the ‘missing people’ but also provides the space for politicizing their marginality through blurring the boundary between the private and the political. Im’s films, such as Sǒp’yǒnje, can be categorized as minor cinema in that they position the missing people in the present and reshape the spectators’ cultural and historical consciousness. In Sǒp’yǒnje, ‘people exist only in the condition of minority’ (Deleuze 1989: 220); it would not have been possible for the audiences to recognize people – including themselves – had the film failed to reconstruct the condition in which they were missing in official history. By looking at Im’s use of traditional music as a characteristic of minor cinema as defined by Deleuze, I examine the function and value of Im’s film music at the crossroads of politics and aesthetics in the Korean context. Im’s innovative deployment of p’ansori will be analysed along with the film’s original score, written by composer Kim Such’ǒl; and critics’ and audiences’ reception of Sǒp’yǒnje will be investigated to see how the film’s music influenced their cinematic experience and how it helped them recognize their cultural identity and identify problems with the appropriation of traditional art in cultural production. I attempt to analyse the film beyond the frames of ideology-laden nationalism and Orientalist aesthetics; rather, I focus on questioning how and why a certain use of sound in cinema such as Sǒp’yǒnje could widen the horizon of Korean cultural identity at a particular moment of history; and how it could further provide us with an opportunity to engage with national cinema from critical angles.

Locality and national cinema: Im Kwǒnt’aek and Sǒp’yǒnje Sǒp’yǒnje was released at a time when the Korean government had publicized its neoliberal economic policy as a way to compete in the global marketplace. In other words, the media’s construction of the film as an authentic Korean cultural product, with Korean content, and one which could compete with American economic and cultural hegemony (i.e. Hollywood films), was a staged fantasy. This neoliberal and cultural nationalist fantasy had yet to mature: it was not until the mid-2000s, when Korean cultural products gained phenomenal popularity in East and Southeast Asia, that their market value increased and boosted national pride among Koreans. The media-promoted national pride, together with the state’s attempt to essentialize ethnocentric nationalism

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through cultural products, has been criticized by journalists and scholars in Korea. Some went further, even arguing that the popularization of ethnocentric nationalism through the emotional means of expression is dangerous, for it can ‘veer into fascism’ when analysing the popularity of Sǒp’yǒnje (Cho, 2002: 140). Although the ethnocentric view of cultural production is something we need to be wary of, I find the association of cultural production with fascism too simplistic. First, we cannot dismiss the utilization of traditional culture in popular media such as film as a blatant expression of nationalism, especially when the state had no role in producing the film. It was only after the release of the film that the state paid attention to traditional forms of Korean art and music; and the state’s interest, together with people’s interest in traditional cultural forms, turned out to be a short-lived phenomenon. Second, we must investigate the social conditions in which the film was viewed to see whether there was a good reason for people’s ‘fascist-like’ enthusiasm over the ‘purity’ of Korean culture. The answer is no: the Korean audiences certainly responded enthusiastically to the music and the film, expressing their delight at discovering the beauty of the Korean music they had long forgotten or never known. At a time in which Korean folk music was considered a cultural relic, appreciated by a small number of music connoisseurs only, p’ansori gained a new interest from many Koreans. Audiences of all ages responded that they did not realize Korea had such beautiful music (Cho, 2002: 139, 143) when watching the film. However, at the time, Koreans had just begun to experience freedom: it was the first year of civilian rule, after thirty-two years of military rule. In other words, the political atmosphere was a relatively liberal one, in which anticommunist or anti-colonial films were disappearing. Sǒp’yǒnje was not a film that utilized cultural heritage to indoctrinate people for political purposes. Furthermore, the Korean economy had yet to face colossal financial problems, which would bring about a nation-wide paranoia and stress to the population in 1997. In short, we are left with little proof of any negative impact that the alleged ‘fascist-like’ enthusiasm might have brought to Korean society, or how the film reflects the ‘fascist-like’ political and cultural conditions. The film indeed was about p’ansori singers who struggle to preserve this traditional form of music in the midst of the modernizing process. Yet this plot alone does not mean that the film essentializes ‘Koreanness’. We first need to look at the social background of the three main characters: the father, Yu Bong, a once promising p’ansori singer who has now become a wandering performer; Yu Bong’s adopted daughter, Songhwa, who eventually refines her singing to



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perfection after going through considerable hardship; and Tongho, Yu Bong’s adopted son, who runs away from the family, then later searches for his sister after many years of separation. These three people are not related by blood and what is Korean about this unusual family is dislocation: each is dislocated from her/his home and can never go back to it. Finding a proper home for this alternate family seems onerous. The social status of travelling performers had been low from premodern times in Korea: especially in the neo-Confucian state, Chosŏn (1392–1910), where abandonment of familial duty and wandering around with strangers were looked down upon by the society. However, dislocation represented by this family goes beyond the historical significance of the travelling performers in the film: it instead functions in a spatial sense and on a cognitive level, both of which are crucial in mapping out the complicated relationship between cultural heritage and national identity embodied in the film. The story of the three people spans from the late 1930s to the 1960s. Before Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, more than five million Koreans – close to a quarter of the whole population – were dislocated from their homeland; many went to Manchuria or Japan in search of land or low-paying jobs and many were mobilized for the Pacific War. When the majority of these Koreans came back to their homeland, they soon met with a catastrophic event that dislocated them again: the Korean War (1950–3). The Korean War witnessed millions of refugees, and those who crossed the 38th parallel either to the North or South have been separated from their homes and families for more than six decades. During the intense economic development in the 1960s, a large portion of the workforce consisted of people from the countryside (Robinson, 2008: 138), and under the heavy government censorship and poor working conditions, many people struggled to gain political rights and improve their living standards. The three performers in the film represent the decades of dislocation, struggle and hardship of people who had lived through political and economic upheaval during this time. The film also articulates the psychological and emotional realm of dislocation that moved the audiences’ minds with the sense of collectivity, and the film’s soundtrack plays a major role in creating this sense. In other words, the film’s sound expands the meaning of the dislocation, thus representing the essence of the shared histories and memories that cannot possibly be represented through images alone. National identity comprises both a cultural and political identity (Smith, 1993: 99). In fact, it is impossible to separate the cultural from

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the political, especially in a country such as Korea where an ethnic notion of nation has been quintessential for collective identity. Although the belief of ‘one ethnicity, one nation’ is being challenged in South Korea, Korean people’s notion of their national identity is deeply entrenched in the ethnic-based conception of their nation; and p’ansori, as a cultural form, functioned as a medium of social cohesion. The question is why p’ansori as an independent musical genre has failed to create popular appeal whereas its utilization in the film succeeded in creating such enormous interest. The answer, I argue, lies in the techniques of utilizing p’ansori as well as music scores, so as to effectively visualize the shared feeling of cultural identity. Im does not particularize this feeling as a timeless or innate cultural sentiment through p’ansori; rather, his use of p’ansori found its space of expression in which the integrity of the traditional music is acknowledged when it coexists with images. In this coexistence, we discover the sense of loss in Im’s emphasis on han – grief, sadness and suffering – a concept that has been much talked about as the ‘main theme’ in Sǒp’yǒnje by critics and audiences alike. As Stringer observes, Sǒp’yǒnje ‘visualizes’ han, the ‘inner domain of national culture’ (2002: 170) that is shared by Korean audiences. Stringer further points out that traditional music indeed ‘has stimulated many Koreans to feel and preserve the inner domain of a shared national culture’ (2002: 173), but he also noted that the ‘inner domain’ deemed to be particularly Korean is fragmentary (2002: 172) since not all Korean people shared their history in the same way; and they experienced p’ansori in a fragmentary way, hearing only a few segments from a complete work. Stringer’s point is crucial to a deeper understanding of Sǒp’yǒnje in terms of the recognition of differences. Flowing underneath the popular sentiment of han put forward by critics and journalists, we see how individual han is grounded on one’s social position in Sǒp’yǒnje; and how it is recognized by the audiences. The mixture of individual han and a shared history is seamlessly projected in the film, where the sound of han seeps through the landscape.

Locating people through the sound of landscape The popularity of the soundtrack as well as the film, Sǒp’yǒnje, revitalized the Korean film industry after many years of decline. Hae Joang Cho points out that the wide distribution of television in the 1970s and the dominance of foreign



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films had caused this decline; and that Sǒp’yǒnje demonstrated the possibility for a domestic film to ‘bridge the gap between the movie industry’ and viewers (Cho, 2002: 138). To be more precise, it was Im Kwǒnt’aek who bridged the gap, not through a single film but through the multiple films that he directed shortly after Sǒp’yǒnje. After producing commercial pictures through which he accumulated extensive experience as a film director, and after evading the state censorship, heavily imposed on the film industry for many years, Im found himself in a time that was suitable to present his artistry. As Michael E. Robinson states, the 1990s saw the Korean film industry liberated from master narratives such as anti-communism, anti-colonialism and pro-capitalism (2002: 15–28). This sense of liberation is reflected in Sǒp’yǒnje through which Im represented those whose voices had previously gone unheard. Although Im’s films produced in the 1990s are not generally categorized as political films, they nonetheless contemplate political matters in terms of his attempt to emphasize the suffering of the marginalized. In this regard, Deleuze’s theorization of minor cinema can be applied to Sǒp’yǒnje: This acknowledgement of a people who are missing is not a renunciation of political cinema, but on the contrary the new basis on which it is founded, in the third world and for minorities. Art, and especially cinematographic art, must take part in this task: not that of addressing a people, which is presupposed already there, but of contributing to the invention of a people. The moment the master, or the colonizer, proclaims ‘There have never been people here’, the missing people are becoming, they invent themselves, in shanty towns and camps, or in ghettos, in new conditions of struggle to which a necessarily political art must contribute. (Deleuze, 1989: 217)

Filmmakers’ attempt to recognize ‘missing people’ in their works has been difficult in Korea because of the long years of colonial and postcolonial authoritarian state policies on cultural productions. The production of films began in Korea during the colonial period (1910–45), during which Korean directors had severe restrictions on the subject matter they could deal with. In addition, mainly due to the absence of films produced during that period, it has been challenging for scholars to contextualize the history of Korean silent films and talkies. Thus, the history of filmmaking had been coloured by anti-colonial ideology in postcolonial South Korea until the late 1990s. A study of film music is even more challenging. The handful of musical scores now available cannot be contextualized properly without their accompanying films.

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The only pieces of Korean film music from this time that can be heard with proper reels are those deployed in the Japanese propaganda films made during the Pacific War (1937–45). However, there are some examples that clearly demonstrate how film music was used creatively by the colonized to express their discontent with the state. Arirang (1926) is an example of a film wherein one of the most beloved folk songs of Korea helped audiences to see themselves as subjects of history. The lyrics of the song itself do not deliver the anti-colonial sentiment explicitly; they are about the sadness of sending one’s lover away. However, the music evoked a powerful emotion when audiences sang the song in unison in the theatre during the last scene when a young Korean man is dragged along by a Japanese police officer. The sad tune of the traditional song, in other words, created a sense of unity among people, who recognized their national identity through singing the song together (Rhee, 2009). Not only did the song become very popular among Koreans in and out of the peninsula, but it was recognized as something distinctively Korean by the Japanese, both then and now (Atkins, 2006).2 Another example is the use of an anti-imperial folk song in a Japanese propaganda film, Homeless Angels (1941), which deals with children’s determination to dedicate their lives to the Japanese Empire. The title of the song is ‘P’arangsaeya’ (A blue bird), which commemorates the antiimperial and anti-Chosǒn government movement leader, Chǒn Pongjun. The lyrics were not heard but the melody – through a character playing piano – was unmistakably there; clearly the music had passed by the colonial censors, who were probably not familiar with the native song. In short, film music did play a political role in creating a moment of recognizing national identity among the audiences in colonial Korea even at a time of severe political oppression. In postcolonial Korea, traditional music rarely gained attention from either filmmakers or audiences, though revised versions of traditional music in the forms of samulnori – traditional percussion-instrument playing performed with gongs and drums – and popular songs were performed and played by many college students and political activists in the 1980s. These were often called ‘the music of the masses’ and were associated with the collective political action against the authoritarian regime, whereas the once commercially produced music of the masses in premodern Korea, such as p’ansori, was now showcased as cultural heritage, enjoyed by a small number of music connoisseurs. As Chungmoo Choi observes, p’ansori was a contested site in the 1980s: the South Korean government raised the status of once commercial folk art, p’ansori, to that of ‘authentic high culture’ in its attempt to promote cultural



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nationalism. However, it failed to gain popularity with the masses (2002: 112). It is, however, questionable whether the public’s sudden interest in p’ansori, which was formed through the commercial success of Sǒp’yǒnje, could be interpreted as a successful case of the popularization of official cultural nationalism. p’ansori certainly boosted people’s interest in their cultural heritage, yet it was the masterful mixture of p’ansori and the modernized version of folk music in the film that directed people to look back to their cultural roots. Sǒp’yǒnje is monumental for its mass appeal beyond the attraction of political activism and cultural nationalism. The song ‘Arirang’ appears in Sǒp’yǒnje in an aesthetically pleasing and emotionally powerful scene. There are many variations of ‘Arirang’, and the version used in Sǒp’yǒnje is more uplifting in terms of its lyrics and upbeat rhythm compared to the sorrowful tune of the version used in the film Arirang. Yet Im’s use of the folk song over p’ansori in this particular scene is fitting in terms of its cross-generational appeal as well as in conveying the depth of the narrative. The five-minute sequence is filled with one song, ‘Chindo arirang’,3 sung by Yu Bong and Songhwa, with Tongho accompanying them on a drum. As one part of the lyrics suggests, Yu Bong delivers his wish for his adopted daughter to become a master-singer, and Songhwa in turn expresses her willingness to take the ‘path of sound’ along with her brother’s drum. This is one happy memory of familial bonds that will soon be broken. Family as a metaphor for the nation has been deployed in Korean cinema since colonial times, and yet the significance of Sǒp’yǒnje rests on its challenge to dominant state narratives such as the unity between Koreans and Japanese and reunification of North and South Korea. Instead, the sense of disunity and dislocation is strongly reflected in this film and the nostalgic setting accentuates the irrevocable past. The family in the peaceful pastoral setting in the particular scene in Sŏp’yŏnje, as I will argue, not only reflects the lost paradise that people cannot recover but also reminds audiences of their lives in a postcolonial urban living environment. The scene is shot in a single take with a static camera. This shot is different from two similar settings prior to it that show the family walking along a tree-lined road and crossing a field, with changing seasons in the background. The first shot shows little Songhwa and Tongho following Yu Bong; and in the second shot, the two are teenagers, and Yu Bong is a middle-aged man. Accompanying these two shots is mood music composed by Kim Such’ǒl. This mood music, played on Korean flutes, is nostalgic – after all, the film begins with the adult Tongho searching for his lost sister, and these scenes are Tongho’s

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recollection of the family he once had. No one speaks in these shots, yet they are there, travelling together as one family. It should be noted that audiences know that Yu Bong dies during the war, and the death of his stepfather may have softened Tongho’s hardened feelings towards him: this may explain the peaceful scene in the long-take shot where the three are performing the music in perfect harmony. Korea’s liberation from Japan and the Korean War are mentioned in a sketchy manner in the film, and none of the main characters refer to the events at all. The events are there as a simple reference of time and the characters’ main concerns are perfecting their artistry in the case of Yu Bong and Songhwa, and finding the lost sister in the case of Tongho; these goals are one and the same thing, that is, a process of locating individual identity in a broader social history. In this long take, none of the external social and political conditions exist; the only focus is the perfectly harmonious music performed by all the family members. In this long take-shot, the family is placed outside the social reality: they do not have to comply with the audience’s demands or endure the contemptuous gaze and remarks that come from high-class audiences. In this shot, however, the audiences are aware of the fact that the family will be disbanded soon through death, escape and wandering. It is important to note that this is a scene where the family performed for themselves with no spectators. In other scenes there are always spectators gathered in bustling markets or private parties: in most cases, their performances are interrupted by ill-mannered clients, the marching of a Western music band or a drug seller’s touting. In other words, this is the only scene where film audiences experienced the performance without the interruption of spectators within the frame. The absence of spectators in the frame allows the audiences in the theatre to parti­ cipate as ‘spectators’, as if they are positioned in the landscape together with the musician family. This is a shot that pulls the audiences into the cinematic space of nation so closely, elevating their sense of national belonging to a communicative level. In the middle of a field, the family slowly emerges from the tip of the winding road in the background while singing, moving to the middle ground, and finally to the foreground, where their figures are fully shown. What does this long take mean in terms of the representation of a social history of missing people? The setting can be described as a romantic vision of the world perpetually lost. The upbeat presentation of the folk song adds a pleasant atmosphere to the perfectly still landscape. Second, it is also projected as a place that stands



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opposite to the political and economic conditions the audiences are positioned in. By the time the film was viewed, South Korean society was going through a new phase of social development in the global context: the segyehwa (globalization) was often emphasized in media as if society had never experienced it. And the trials of former dictators were broadcast nationwide. The authoritarian state-led economic development was about to end, and people were thrown into the ‘real’ world of economic competition, yet as ‘liberated individuals’. The peace and harmony symbolized by the lyrical setting, in other words, is a cinematic space that never existed but could exist only in the minds of the audiences. The pristine state of the imagined landscape would soon be lost during the process of modernization in postcolonial Korea. The long shot lacks realism, and it is the purely imaginary construction of the past that activates the audiences’ minds to view the image in relation to their social position. Once the three performers disappear to the right side of the frame, the camera remains fixed in the same position for a few seconds during which a dry sound of wind is heard. The sound of the wind emphasizes the emptiness of the space; certainly, the performers are gone, moving towards the future where unfortunate fate awaits them. Yet the sound of the wind also signifies the impending changes in society, more specifically, the urbanizing process. It is not a coincidence that there are multiple shots of Tongho travelling on a bus throughout the film; and the places he visits to search for his sister are rural areas, which, unlike the rural scene in the long-take shot, are abandoned and barren. Young people are not seen in the rural villages, and Tongho’s presence in the barren landscape reminds the audience of the tranquillity and harmony forever lost to them. By the time Tongho finally finds his sister, it is very likely the 1960s, a time when rural villages were thoroughly left out from the nation’s industrial development. As demonstrated by the ‘new village movement’ launched by the Chunghee Park regime in 1970, which was an attempt to narrow the economic disparity between cities and rural villages: there was nothing romantic about the level of poverty in rural areas during this time. This barren landscape would have been more realistic to the audiences since many of them had gone through the rapid urbanization process during which their rural hometowns were abandoned or neglected. In short, landscape occupies the film as a social reference to the postcolonial economic development. Whether the landscape reflects the reality of the place audiences know or remember is a secondary matter to how it maps out the audiences’ identity through visual manipulation of a view that is deemed to be distinctively Korean.

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The ending of Sǒp’yǒnje is not one-dimensional. It shows that perfecting one’s art can be achieved through transcending suffering, or reconciling with the past through the rediscovery of one’s cultural heritage. The film is rather about the ambiguity of the tradition and modernity that generated such anxiety in the minds of the film’s audience. This anxiety is both individual and collective, which is embodied in the expression of han.

Masculine vision and feminine sound of suffering Han is generally understood as a sentiment that is associated with suffering, grief and pain derived from one’s feeling of oppression. It has been discussed extensively by public intellectuals and scholars, explaining individual suffering in the context of Korea’s colonial history. Its social implication is generally taken to be that han encourages people to accept the impossibility of overcoming sources of suffering, which is viewed as a sign of one’s moral defeat to social injustice; or, it could activate a positive energy in people to overcome these sources of suffering. Inasmuch as ordinary people believe that han is a Korea-specific cultural sentiment, as if their individual sentiment represents that of their fellow Koreans, the discussion of han in its broader association with colonial and postcolonial contexts needs to sufficiently address how its meaning has become widespread. If it was formed through colonial experience, why does it not represent the suffering of people who were colonized in other parts of the world, for example? Many cultural critics of Sǒp’yǒnje argue that the film represented the essence of han artistically, and Songhwa is a good example of this: she shows how han can be overcome through forgiving her father and reconciling with her social position. Only through overcoming han can she perfect her voice. In the film, Songhwa’s stepfather blinds her so that she internalizes han, which is, in the stepfather’s opinion, the central condition for perfecting one’s art. Yet, when he is dying, he tells her to overcome the han: she must understand the feeling of han in order to refine her voice. Yet a higher level of perfection can be obtained through overcoming it. From a social perspective, Songhwa is marginalized in every way: she loses her mother when she is young; she becomes a low-class travelling performer; she tries to reach a higher level of artistry in spite of society’s disparaging of the art form; and she loses her vision forever. The process of overcoming han through art can be interpreted as an ‘art for art’s sake’ modernist attitude embedded in Sǒp’yǒnje, while some would argue that



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the intentionally implanted han is nothing but violence done to Songhwa in the name of art (Kim, 2007: 222–9). One of the most problematic issues that has been raised by feminist scholars, however, is the creation of feminine Others as a way of compensating for the damaged masculinity that resulted from colonial oppression and the postcolonial capitalist development. Chungmoo Choi argues: The film’s aesthetic frame exoticizes and eroticizes Korea by rediscovering it as the sacred, uncontaminated, that is, undeveloped virgin land. It masks the intensely developed industrial country that lies outside the camera frame. In other words, the film adopts the viewpoint of both the colonial male gaze and the Othered feminine subject responding to that gaze. Under this self-primitivizing, internalized colonial male gaze, a daughter is blinded for the perfection of a cultural nationalist artifact that fulfills the masculinist desire of a father who has been shunted off to the margins of that capitalist development. (Choi, 2008: 116)

In the above statement, a parallel is drawn between Yu Bong’s damaged masculinity and his marginalization; and the method of expressing his frustration with his social reality and desire to regain masculinity is viewed as a violent act. Mutilating his daughter’s body in order to fulfil his masculinist desire is certainly problematic. Songhwa is thus seen as a feminine Other whose subjectivity is erased by her stepfather. While this criticism identifies the problem of creating feminine figures in order to represent the perennial purity a father so desires, there is another cinematic quality about the feminine figure that can be analysed beyond the binaries of modern versus premodern, purity versus contamination, and subject versus object. Rather than focusing more on the visuality of the feminine Other, I would like to pay more attention to the sound effects that could complicate the masculinist desire and feminine Other that are manifest in the mutilated female body. Although Songhwa’s han is emphasized, Tongho’s han is also an important component in the film. In the original novel, Tongho’s hatred towards his stepfather is more intense, and perhaps the rivalry between Tongho and his father over Songhwa might have complicated Tongho’s feelings towards him. Nonetheless, Tongho runs away from the family because he cannot endure their poverty anymore, and he is highly doubtful about the future of p’ansori. His attempt to locate his sister after many years of separation may have to do with his deep bonds with her, but also with his guilt over abandoning her,

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which becomes more acute when he hears the news of his sister being blinded by their stepfather. In other words, his attempt to find his sister may project his desire to return to the ‘virgin land’ where everybody was happy, but it also has to do with willingness to undo one’s wrongs. As I have analysed earlier, as a mature man Tongho does not appear in a pristine rural landscape, and when he finally finds Songhwa, the shabby appearance of the bar where she is staying is not much different from the abandoned house where she and her stepfather were staying during the war. If the male desire to see the ‘virgin land’ through a woman’s body is evident as Choi argues, we face a complicated situation with Tongho. One may argue that the ‘purity’ is now embodied in Songhwa’s voice, but the aesthetic power of the scene in which they are reunited goes beyond the affirmation of the male discovery of purity. The reunion scene is the second time the sound of Tongho’s drum soars high, mingling perfectly with Songhwa’s singing. Tongho recognizes Songhwa right away when he first sees her at the bar, yet Songhwa needs to wait until she hears Tongho’s drum, which she finds ‘so much like his father’s’. Upon Tongho’s request to listen to Songhwa’s p’ansori, the two start performing ‘Simch’ǒngjǒn’ (The tales of Simch’ǒng) together. ‘Simch’ǒngjǒn’ is a story of a filial daughter who sells herself to be a human sacrifice to the Dragon King so that her blind father can have the means to survive. However, the King of Heaven is deeply moved by her filial act so he saves Simch’ǒng from the ocean and lets her be reunited with her father; and her father in turn regains his vision when he is reunited with his daughter. In the film, Songhwa gains ‘inner vision’ through perfecting her sound. Even though she cannot physically see Tongho, she ‘hears’ him and his emotions. Tongho’s tears stream down his face during the performance, which Songhwa cannot see. But Songhwa’s blindness does not become a barrier to their expression of true feeling; rather, it filters the true essence of their feelings. There is no suggestion that Tongho, on the other hand, is able to forgive his stepfather in this reunion scene: instead, his guilt and sadness over Songhwa’s endurance of violence and suffering overwhelm him. He cannot protect his sister against the tyranny of patriarchal violence, which will only be strengthened in the name of capitalist development. The reunion then symbolizes two particular aspects of Korean society: first, the continuous marginalization that Tongho and Songhwa experience; and second, the sense of loss and powerlessness, which is heightened by Tongho’s tears. There is no projection of masculinist desire from Tongho, because of Tongho and Songhwa’s anticipation of their winding paths in the future.



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What is peculiar about this reunion is the switch of p’ansori with mood music in the middle of the scene: the diegetic sound of p’ansori and drum performance is replaced with non-diegetic mood music. As Stringer points out, this scene betrays Western audiences’ expectations of the film as one about finding the beauty of one’s cultural heritage (2001: 164). Yet, at the climax, Korean audiences – both men and women, older and younger generations – became emotionally involved, shedding tears throughout the few minutes of the reunion. Stringer states that Im made an ‘admirable attempt to “visualize” the “inner” domain of national culture’ (2001: 170), with ‘inner domain’ referring to a spiritual culture of the colonized through the deployment of Western technologies such as the traditional mood music created by Koran flutes and a synthesizer. While Stringer’s observation addresses how cultural particularity is reconstructed in colonial and postcolonial societies through the deployment of technology, I would like to explore the multiplicity of the ‘inner domain’ through a detailed analysis of the sound in the climactic scene in a domestic context. It seemed that most audiences were not distracted by the transition from diegetic to non-diegetic sound during the scene, in which the brother and sister do not acknowledge each other’s identities; many people expressed that they could not help weeping at this scene. Rather than verbally acknowledging their true identities, the characters’ inner feelings are mutually recognized in silence. Not only Songhwa’s grief but also Tongho’s grief is delivered through the mood music where the non-diegetic sound transcends the near impossibility of expressing one’s feelings towards one another. The fact that the two perform ‘Simch’ǒngjǒn’ reminds the audiences of their stepfather since, more often than not, the concept of han in a Korean context is associated with family relations. In a society where filial piety and harmony among family members are regarded as supreme virtues to uphold, the thematic choice of the two performers appealed to the audiences with sentiments familiar to them all. Tongho’s guilt over abandoning his blind sister, which has weighed on his heart so heavily over the decades, is expressed in muted sound. The ingenuity of the transition rests on the visualization of the accumulated guilt and grief through the mood music, not p’ansori. Audiences can see Songhwa singing, and Tongho beating the drum, yet these sounds are unheard. It is through this ‘muted sound of grief ’ that each audience member’s han is projected onto the screen where his or her feeling of grief and sadness is not verbalized but visualized. Han is accumulated over time, and there is a wide perception in Korea that han cannot be easily resolved in real life. In other words, the two levels of grief – first, the historical grief accumulated

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over time since the colonial days, and second, the realization of the impossibility of gaining back what has been lost – are embodied in this climax where the history of separation, death, dislocation and hatred of the family unfolds. Although the skilful mixture of aural and visual renderings of familial grief was one of the main factors for the film’s mass appeal, the expression of the ‘inner domain’ of culture through the female voice leaves us to challenge the essentialization of national culture through creating a feminine Other within. The stepfather mutilates Songhwa’s body in order to fulfil his frustrated masculinist desire, and Tongho affirms the continuing state of repressed masculinity through Songhwa’s voice. However, Tongho’s gaze at his sister is much more complicated than the notion of his projection of repressed masculinity: it embodies his guilt for abandoning the familial bond as well as his protest against the patriarchal violence imposed on his sister and himself. Songhwa’s mutilated body and her perfected voice remain problematic, and the fact that she forgives her stepfather is disputable: the exchange of imperfect body for the perfect voice is a grotesquely romanticized vision of national identity.

Conclusion Sǒp’yǒnje is monumental for its momentary revival of the waning tradition of p’ansori and for its aesthetic construction of the sorrow-laden history of people in Korea – a construction in which the voice of the ordinary people is visualized. P’ansori becomes a medium that connects the audience with this particular form of cultural heritage through the sense of loss and nostalgia. The discovery of the beauty of the cultural heritage, as audiences and critics much discussed after watching the film, in fact, is nothing but an affirmation of the loss followed by the anxiety of the fate of ‘national culture’ in the neoliberal political economy in the mid-1990s. The time of the film’s release is especially significant: not only did the culture industry provide an opportunity to portray ordinary people’s historical suffering in films, but also, the end of the rapid state-led capitalist development under the authoritarian regime brought with it a moment for people to look back on things that they had lost along the way. The slow progress of the performers in the pristine rural scene is especially significant since it evokes the powerful feeling of nostalgia that is conveyed enchantingly through the folk song, ‘Arirang’. Another aesthetic achievement of Im’s is the visualization of han, a historically and culturally accumulated sentiment that can be acknowledged on the



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blurring boundary between sound and muteness. Im’s use of mood music against the backdrop of the sister and the brother’s performance is a striking feature of Sǒp’yǒnje in terms of its belated acknowledgement of cultural heritage. The artistic perfection Songhwa reaches comes at the cost of her bodily mutilation and psychological suffering, a masculinist vision of purity that is projected through Othering Songhwa. And Tongho only confirms his helplessness for not being able either to go back to the time of innocence or to protect her and himself from the brutal force of modernization. The importance of preserving cultural heritage is not the main point of the film, and the audiences’ discovery of the beauty of p’ansori only reveals the surface of the psychological anxiety people experienced in the midst of modernization. Songhwa and Tongho’s fate is predictable when the two get separated again without acknowledging each other’s identities. The sense of continuity, and the continuity of loss and wandering, lingers around the film. In Sǒp’yǒnje, missing people were brought into the screen, yet they will soon wander again as nameless historical subjects. In this light, the final scene where Songhwa is led by her young daughter is perplexing for its optimism: this dilutes the aesthetics of the impossibility of overcoming han, that is, the impossibility not to go along with the modernizing process. Nevertheless, Sǒp’yǒnje provided a new experience of film for Korean audiences because of its visualization of the shared history of people, and because of the resultant criticism about the film’s troubling gender representation as well as the essentialization of national culture, all of which came after the release of the film. The use of cultural heritage such as p’ansori in films will remain controversial among audiences and critics, yet this is also a sign of audiences’ attempts to locate their identities by negotiating various boundaries: class, gender, local and global.

Notes 1 Korean Film Biz Zone (1993). Seopyeonje: http://www.koreanfilm.or.kr/jsp/films/ index/filmsView.jsp?movieCd=19930025 [accessed 7 July 2014]. 2 Atkins argues that Japan’s attempt to define Arirang as specifically Korean music had to do with its assimilationist policies after the Manchu incident (1931). Arirang was represented as a cultural marker that celebrated the racial diversity in the Japanese Empire. 3 A version of ‘Arirang’ originated in Chindo, a southern part of the Korean peninsula.

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References Atkins T. (2007) ‘The Dual Career of “Arirang”: The Korean Resistance Anthem that became a Japanese Pop Hit’. The Journal of Asian Studies 66 (3): 645–87. Cho, H. J. (2002) ‘Sopyonje: Its Cultural and Historical Meaning’, in D. E. James and K. H. Kim (eds) Im Kwon-taek: The Making of a Korean National Cinema. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press: 134–56. Choi, C. (2002) ‘The Politics of Gender, Aestheticism, and Cultural Nationalism in Sopyonje and The Genealogy’, in D. E. James and K. H. Kim (eds) Im Kwon-taek: The Making of a Korean National Cinema. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press: 107–32. Deleuze, G. (1989) Cinema 2: The Time Image. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Homeless Angels (1941) [Film] Directed by Ch’oe In’gyu. [DVD]. Seoul: Korean Film Archive. Kim, I. (2007) ‘Sǒp’yǒnje ǔi han kwa hanminjok ǔi chǒngsǒ’ [‘Han in Sǒp’yǒnje and the Sentiment of Korean people’]. Uri munhwa yǒn’gu 22: 213–41. Korean Film Biz Zone (1993) from Seopyeonje. Available online: http://www.koreanfilm. or.kr/jsp/films/index/filmsView.jsp?movieCd=19930025 [accessed 7 July 2014]. Rhee, J. (2009) ‘Arirang and the Making of a National Narrative in South and North Korea’. Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema 1 (1): 27–43. Robinson, M. E. (2002) ‘Contemporary Cultural Production in South Korea: Vanishing Meta-Narratives of Nation’, in C. Shin and J. Stringer (eds) New Korean Cinema. New York: New York University Press: 15–31. Robinson, M. E. (2008) Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Shin, G. (2006) Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Smith, A. (1993) National Identity. Reno, LA: University of Nevada Press. Sǒp’yǒnje (1993) [Film] Directed by Im Kwǒnt’aek [DVD]. Seoul: CineLine. Stringer, J. (2002) ‘Sǒp’yǒnje and the Inner Domain of National Culture’, in C. Shin and J. Stringer (eds) New Korean Cinema. New York: New York University Press: 157–81. The T’aebaek Mountain (1994) [Film] Directed by Im Kwǒnt’aek. [DVD]. Seoul: T’aehǔng Yǒnghwa. Williams, R. (2007) ‘Culture is Ordinary’, in B. Highmore (ed.) The Everyday Life Reader. London and New York: Routledge: 91–100.

8

Music and the ‘Minor’: Musical Expression as Oral Testimony in the Films of Bahman Ghobadi Rowena Santos Aquino

Introduction This chapter examines Kurdish Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi’s films Marooned in Iraq (2002), Half-Moon (2006) and No One Knows About Persian Cats (2009). I argue that through the shared characteristics of their music, they constitute a loose trilogy notable in Ghobadi’s filmography. These films simultaneously present music as a narrative impetus and mode of performance, and marginalized Kurdish/Iranian expressions and communities. The joint actions of musical performance and cross-border movement in these films locate music as a significant form of oral testimony, particularly of the experiences of Kurdish Iranians, women and youth. In the process, these films resonate with what Gilles Deleuze terms a ‘minor’ cinema. If minor cinema is about the ‘storytelling of the people yet to come’ and a ‘becoming’, then these three films communicate variations of such a storytelling and ‘becoming’, uniquely propelled by cross-border movement and musical expression. Ghobadi’s films’ elaboration of a minor cinema also includes blurring the boundary between documentary and fiction. Playing with the documentaryfiction boundary reflects the physical movement between actual geographical and sociopolitical boundaries that takes place in these films, but it is also intimately connected with the notion of music as a mode of oral testimony. I argue that by operating within an aesthetics of the ‘and’ at both a narrative and a formal level, these films elaborate a minor cinematic practice based on musical oral testimonies.

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The itinerant cinema of Bahman Ghobadi Since his debut feature film A Time for Drunken Horses (2000), which won the Caméra d’or at the Cannes International Film Festival, Ghobadi has made it a point to represent the underrepresented. A Time for Drunken Horses was the first film in the Kurdish language produced in Iran. Significantly, Ghobadi founded the production company Mij Film to enable the production of films on different ethnicities in Iran. Prior to 2000, he made a number of documentary films during the 1990s, and perhaps most prominently served as the assistant director to Abbas Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), which is set mainly in a Kurdish village and features Kurdish dialogue. Coinciding with his debut feature was his fellow Iranian filmmaker Samira Makhmalbaf ’s Blackboards (2000), which also features Kurdish dialogue. This film focuses on Kurdish Iranian refugees and takes place at the Iran–Iraq border during the war between the two countries in the 1980s. Ghobadi stars as one of the Kurdish Iranian refugees who do what they can to continue their work as itinerant teachers. Since 2000, Ghobadi has made six feature films, all of which deal with nomadic characters, journeys, and above all, traversing borders. He once stated, ‘To me, “border” is a nonsensical, grim, and disgusting word. It’s something imposed on us. […] In my films, I always show borders as the dirtiest things’ (Ghobadi, 2003). Borders are a prominent preoccupation in his films, especially since a great number of his characters are Kurdish, like himself. Kurdistan, while acknowledged as a region, is not officially recognized as a state. Instead, Kurdistan as a geographical space lies in four different countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Kurds thus constantly have to navigate between their established regional identity and history and their statelessness. Such a fractured subjectivity resonates all the more with Ghobadi, who has been in exile since 2010 to avoid censorship. His films also focus on borders because they simultaneously connote restricted and clandestine movement. Like his character of the itinerant teacher in Blackboards, Ghobadi is an itinerant filmmaker who continues to make films as best as he can, even as conditions to do so become increasingly difficult. From this perspective, Ghobadi’s films pose a challenge to the Western concept of the nation state and reveal its limitations as a framework of analysis. From this perspective, too, Kurdish cinema including Ghobadi’s films emerges paradoxically from a lack of geographical border specificity, or inversely, from a geographical border plurality. Films of Kurdish history, culture



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and expression are therefore exemplary of a ‘minor’ cinema, of a ‘people yet to come’. In Ghobadi’s cinema, particularly in Marooned in Iraq, Half-Moon and No One Knows About Persian Cats, the three-pronged preoccupations of history, culture and expression coalesce in music as a mode of representation, not only of Kurdish identities but also of other marginalized communities for which music plays a significant role. Music’s prominence in these three films thus positions it at the intersection of the poetics and politics of cinema. In this regard, be they tangential or central, musical performances in these three films can be read as both fictional storytelling and documentary testimony, especially given the circumstances of the films’ production histories and the people involved as the cast. From the beginning of his work in feature films, Ghobadi has in fact always blurred the boundaries between documentary and fiction. He tends to shoot in actual locations, works mainly with non-professional actors and presents fictional scenarios that nevertheless ring true to lived experiences – including those of his non-professional cast. This blurring finds its narrative equivalent in Ghobadi’s characters, who are frequently compelled to feel the ‘anguish of borders’ (Kilic, 2005) in a geographical and sociopolitical sense and thus to constantly be on the move between borders. The three films that are the focus of this chapter continue both the ‘anguish of borders’ and blurring of documentary-fiction boundaries, but with music as the principal trait of characters and their experiences.

Ghobadi’s trilogy of musical journeys Music is the backbone for Marooned in Iraq (2002), Half-Moon (2006) and No One Knows About Persian Cats (2009), for it explicitly shapes all aspects of the stories and production. More specifically, music dictates the films’ characters and drives their actions and decisions. In turn, music also dictated the people whom Ghobadi chose to portray the characters. The actual title of Marooned in Iraq in Persian translates as ‘Songs of my homeland’. The film is set during the Iran–Iraq War (1980–8). Father Mirza (Shahab Ebrahimi) and his two adult sons Barat (Faegh Mohamadi) and Audeh (Allah-Morad Rashtian) pass through Iran and Iraq in search of a woman named Hanareh (Iran Ghobadi). Mirza was once a musician who performed

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in a band with Hanareh and her current husband. However, the three men embark on a journey between the two countries at war to find Hanareh, for they have received word that she may be in trouble in Iraq. In the process of their geographical journey, we see the Kurdish landscape and encounter Kurdish communities in constant movement as a result of the war. The dramatic crux is spread throughout the film, based on Mirza and sons’ search for Hanareh and their various encounters with displaced Kurds during the search. A significant aspect of these encounters is their musical performances for those whom they encounter along the way. Half-Moon was among the six films commissioned in 2006 for the New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s birth; it was inspired in part by Mozart’s unfinished Requiem. Like a mirror image of Marooned in Iraq, father Mamo (Ismail Ghaffari) and his sons come together to travel across the border between Iran and Iraq, with the help of their driver Kako (Allah-Morad Rashtian). They are set to perform a final concert in Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein. At Mamo’s insistence, they pick up exiled female singer Hesho (Hedieh Tehrani) in a village along the way. The journey becomes doubly perilous because Mamo did not obtain the necessary Iranian authorization to undertake this journey with his sons and Hesho herself does not have authorization either. The travellers thus experience a number of setbacks at border checkpoints. Yet with each setback, including Mamo’s visions of his own death – the nod to Mozart’s Requiem – they create an alternative route to be able to reach their musical destination. Once again, as in Marooned in Iraq, the film’s emotional and dramatic intensity emerges from the physical trek, with music as the narrative point of departure (see Figure 10). The setting of No One Knows About Persian Cats is different from the two aforementioned films. Instead of the wide, rugged landscape of Kurdistan, the film takes place in the confined, urban spaces of Tehran. It concerns twentysomething underground musicians, as opposed to middle-aged and older adults. But the impulse to make a journey and make music is overwhelmingly present here, as in the previous two films. Band mates Ashkan (Ashkan Koshanejad) and Negar (Negar Shaghaghi) strive to form a band and attend a music festival in the UK. In the course of meeting candidates with whom to form their band, with the help of underground music fan and producer Nadar (Hamed Behdad), Ashkan and Negar meet a number of fellow musicians. The couple discovers how they practise in unlikely spaces and conditions so as to



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Figure 10  Half-Moon (2006) © 2012, Mij Film

avoid arrest, just like them, since they do not have official authorization from the government to play music and/or perform in front of an audience. How all of these musicians deal with everyday censorship pressures at the local and state levels constitutes the film’s main theme and strength. As with Ghobadi’s other films, these three particular films present marginalized expressions and communities in Iran: Kurdish Iranians, women and youth. But setting them apart from Ghobadi’s other works is the fact that the main characters are all musicians. Music permeates these three films, thematically, performatively and narratively speaking. Notably, musicians also constitute a marginalized, underground community in Iran, precisely because a majority of them engage in musical activities without government authorization and the necessary licences, and so risk arrest. As such, Kurdish Iranian musicians, female singers, and young, aspiring Iranian performers are doubly marginalized. Ghobadi and his cast give voice to actual individual and collective experiences through fictional scenarios that revolve around music: not only their own experiences but also the experiences of those who remain silenced and/or invisible. Notably, the main cast in the three films comprises non-professional actors on the one hand, and professional musicians on the other hand. These films can thus be regarded as a loose trilogy connected specifically through

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musical expression. In fact, musical expression is ultimately the narrative itself in these films. From Marooned in Iraq to No One Knows About Persian Cats, music becomes increasingly the focal point so that musical expression is no longer just a question of spectacle in these films. Rather, it also becomes a mode of testimony and communication, and the critical point where documentary and fiction meet. Musical expression as a mode of oral testimony in Ghobadi’s three films becomes more explicit when filtered through the lens of French philosopher and film theorist Gilles Deleuze’s notion of a ‘minor’ cinema.

Gilles Deleuze’s ‘minor cinema’ Deleuze’s notion of a ‘minor’ cinema is an extension of his and Félix Guattari’s theorization of a ‘minor’ literature in their study of Franz Kafka (Deleuze and Guattari, 1986). At a basic level, minor literature refers to literary and linguistic production that dislocates established, dualistic relationships of meaning and order. Moreover, minor literature opens up multiple forms and expressions within major linguistic structures of power. The minor therefore does not exist outside of the major but rather within it. As such, the minor is an immanent process in the major. To Simon O’Sullivan the minor is the process of ‘a making strange of typical signifying regimes’ (O’Sullivan, 2005). According to Deleuze and Guattari, minor literature is characterized by three particular elements that make this ‘making strange’ possible: it unsettles sedimented linguistic forms by putting language into unlikely, incongruous uses; the individual work and author is always already connected to the political; and it functions in the mode of the collective (Deleuze and Guattari, 1986: 16–19). Ultimately, the minor as a concept – regardless of the medium – is a mode of cultural production that carves new and different forms of expression, subjectivity and action within a dominant culture and dominant representational forms. The minor thus connotes a transformative and creative social act, even revolutionary. Pushed to the edges, the minor refers to not only cultural production but also the conditions in which such cultural production can occur. Deleuze later extended the notion of a minor literature to the cinematic medium (Deleuze, 1989). Minor cinema is Deleuze’s theorization of a modern political cinema, different from a classical political cinema. The latter entails the notion of the masses and of a people already there, which can be described as a dominant culture. In contrast, a minor cinema, or modern political cinema,



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involves a people who are missing or in the process of ‘becoming’. In other words, these are cultures and communities that ‘fall through the cracks’ due to fixed and exclusionary representational models (Deleuze, 1989: 216). However, by ‘a people who are missing’, Deleuze does not mean an idealized unity that is jolted into presence and roused to sudden self-awareness, self-consciousness and self-representation, but rather the way in which an actual group can express themselves politically, culturally and socially, to operate within the major and disrupt it. Minor cinema storytelling involves the production of utterances and acts that hold from the beginning political valence and collective value for an already existing group, community and/or culture. Following D. N. Rodowick’s elaboration of the minor, minor cinema concerns ‘affirm[ing] a people in their collective becoming, [and] defin[ing] their potential or their affirmative will to power’ (Rodowick, 1997: 153) at the level of the image. In its most fundamental sense, minor cinema is about the intimate relationship between collective political identity and will, and representation. Deleuze’s notion of minor cinema provides a critical and productive framework with which to examine Ghobadi’s three films and the role of music as a form of oral testimony. With this trilogy, Ghobadi presents a minor cinematic practice that is specific to his experiences, cultures and region, but also gestures towards cross-border communication and encounters.

Ghobadi’s musical trilogy as a minor cinematic practice Minor cinema as cultural production and storytelling is critical and creative, individual and collective, private and political. It is always potentially in the process of ‘becoming’, and continually shaped by changing factors and conditions, to enable associations, articulations and subjectivities. As such, minor cinema is never singular but always already multiple and simultaneous. It challenges dualistic thinking through collectivities, multiplicities and simultaneities. Ultimately, minor cinema imagines and articulates ‘new possibilities for social interaction’ (Parr, 2010: 171) and representation. Such storytelling carries great political import and, indeed, constitutes a political act. Marooned in Iraq, Half-Moon and No One Knows About Persian Cats are particularly notable in this regard. Taken together, they are variations of the same film and speak to minor cinema’s aesthetics of the ‘and’. Marginalization, movement and music shape both the content and form. Thematically, all three

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films feature musicians as a marginalized community as the main protagonists. Their status as Kurds and/or musicians and their physical trek without proper authorization mark their marginality. They are all compelled to traverse borders, both internationally and locally, for reasons that relate to music. If such reasons for travel appear at first glance personal, they are at the same time fundamentally political. Two reference the actual climate of Iran–Iraq wartime and post-war periods and their impact on Kurdish populations, and one the actual conditions of music censorship and restrictions in which Iranian musicians live. Formally, and so affecting performance, all three films collapse the boundaries between documentary and fiction through their location and cast. With a few exceptions, the cast in these films are not professional actors, but professional musicians. While characters in each of these films are all individuals possessed of distinct traits, the emphasis is just as much on the collective: a band of musicians travelling and/or performing together, with the actual musicians presenting fictional variations of themselves and/or their lives, and speaking in their own words in collaboration with Ghobadi. In these ways, this trilogy conjures the very notion of collectivities, multiplicitie and simultaneities characteristic of minor cinema. This trilogy speaks to both Deleuze’s notion of a modern political cinema as well as Ghobadi’s specific concerns as a Kurdish Iranian filmmaker. If Deleuze’s term ‘the people are missing’ in minor cinema ‘means [that] they require an enabling image that can summon them into existence as identity becoming other’ (Rodowick, 1997: 141), then Ghobadi’s trilogy of musical journeys presents such enabling images. Together they summon a people who are already there but who have been silenced and prevented from producing individual–collective expressions and exercising their political will, specifically through music. A closer look now at the three films further elaborates Ghobadi’s minor cinematic practice. In discussing Ghobadi’s work, Anne Patrick Major writes of his ‘motivation to make films for collective cultural identities that lack globally recognizable signifiers’ (Major, 2012: 46). Major’s description of Ghobadi’s intentions aligns him with what minor cinema purports to articulate. Ghobadi’s films function as tapestries of marginalized expressions and communities: not to present solutions per se, but to register complex realities and struggles, and also forms of resistance, which remain un(der)represented and therefore invisible. Furthermore, Major identifies in Ghobadi ‘two agendas, the first of which is to enunciate Kurdish cultural identities within the global mediascape, and the other is to break the hermetic seal of Iran’s locality and create a vehicle in the



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global arena for diverse expressions of Iranian culture’ (Major, 2012: 45). These agendas, as Major calls them, are intimately intertwined in the sense that the enunciation of Kurdish cultural identities constitute one among many diverse, but muffled, expressions that help to make up Iranian culture. Ghobadi’s trilogy focuses precisely on ‘diverse expressions of Iranian culture’, namely, Kurdish communities, women’s voices and young people, all united by music. Such a focus is in keeping with Ghobadi’s ‘intention of making a cinema for a voiceless people’ (Kilic, 2005), while a ‘voiceless people’ clearly speaks to minor cinema’s ‘missing’ people in the process of ‘becoming’ in the realm of representation. With regards to the Kurdish community, Ghobadi’s films in general are significant by putting Kurds, their experiences, and particularly their language and music, on the screen. They play a pivotal role in an ‘emerging Kurdish cinema’ (Kilic, 2005), since they are some of the first films made in the Kurdish language. His work has met with both support and resistance in Iran. An example of the latter is when Ghobadi was advised to cut down Kurdish dialogue by 20 per cent for Half-Moon, which he refused to do (Scarlet, 2007). Prior to Ghobadi, instrumental in bringing Kurdish histories and experiences onscreen are the 1970s’ and 1980s’ works of Turkish filmmaker, screenwriter and actor Yilmaz Güney, whose parents were Kurds. However, The Herd (1979), written by Güney, was made in Turkish. The Kurdish language had been banned since the establishment of Turkish borders in 1923, and it was rarely, if ever, used until the last few decades. Today there are Kurdish-language television stations, newspapers and university courses. In Iran, Kurdish was never banned, but the state policy of Persian-language dominance beginning in the 1920s repressively curbed Kurds’ linguistic rights, in speech and education, publication and mass media. However, summer 2015 saw the establishment of Kurdish language studies for the first time in the country, following the Syrian government’s introduction of a Kurdish language course in state-run universities in 2014. Among the four countries in which Kurdistan lies, Iraq is the only country where Kurdish is one of its official languages, which partially explains why Iraq is a prominent place for the musician characters in Marooned in Iraq and Half-Moon. And while Kurdish music has not been banned as such in these countries, with the exception of Turkey it is censored and constitutes a marginalized, even underground, practice. With Marooned in Iraq and Half-Moon, Ghobadi puts Kurdish language and music at the forefront through the global, mainstream medium of cinema.

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Also regarding Marooned in Iraq and Half-Moon specifically, despite having male lead characters, the implicit narrative is driven by a woman, her experiences and her invisibility. The pursuit of her becomes an act of both acknowledging her invisibility and making her visible, highlighting her silence and her voice, reflected in the fact that Hanareh in Marooned in Iraq and Hesho in Half-Moon are both singers. Ghobadi explains that for Marooned in Iraq Mirza’s search for Hanareh was just a pretext to travel around Kurdistan and showcase its landscape, and he did not want the audience to get too involved in the search for her. However, the reason for choosing a woman as the object of the characters’ journey remains significant in terms of articulating Kurdish national identity and female oppression: ‘When we get to where Hanareh is supposed to be, there is no Hanareh,’ for ‘Kurdistan has not been realised yet’ (Ghobadi, 2003). More significantly, even when Mirza catches up with Hanareh, neither he nor the spectator ever sees her directly. The film instead shows only her right eye and her back is to the camera when she speaks, in a faint, ghostly tone because she lost her voice as a result of the chemical bombing of Kurdistan during the Iran–Iraq War. Hanareh’s departure from Iran twenty-three years ago is also a veiled reference to the banning of women’s public singing in Iran following the 1979 Islamic revolution. The search for exiled female singer Hesho has a similar thematic and metaphorical function in Half-Moon. Mamo’s sons protest against his desire to bring her along to perform at the gig in Iraq, but he insists, ‘Without her, we are incomplete.’ Hanareh and Hesho are undeniably emblematic, enabling images of both Kurdish and female subjectivities, delineated in terms of music. A cinema for a voiceless people also applies substantially to the myriad Iranian musicians featured in No One Knows About Persian Cats. The young underground musicians whom Ghobadi met during the film inspired and affected his approach to making it. In fact, unlike Marooned in Iraq and Half-Moon, he made the film without the necessary government approval and permit. But like the characters in all three films, he mirrored their lack of official authorization for travel and/or music-making. He even references this parallel between himself and the young musicians at the beginning of the film. Ghobadi appears very briefly in a recording studio, where the main protagonists Ashkan and Negar drop by and learn about Ghobadi’s plight of being unable to make films, and discover that as a result, he has turned to singing. The resulting film is ‘to scream against the situation [of music censorship], scream like all the members of the bands I worked with. I wanted to scream along with



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them, making this film as a statement against the brutal situation we were all under’ (Benedikt, 2009). No One Knows About Persian Cats is perhaps the most explicit in its aesthetics of the ‘and’, of critique-creativity, individual-collective, and personal-political. Together, these three films ‘exist as cultural objects that circulate oppress[ed] voices and […] erased cultural images’ (Major, 2012: 60), specifically linked by music. They exist in, or despite, their own marginality, particularly since Half-Moon and No One Knows About Persian Cats were banned in Iran. Cross-border movement and music mark the characters’ marginality in all three films. More distinctively, cross-border movement simultaneously has a physical, social and formal connotation. It denotes crossing geographical borders and navigating between clandestine and public spaces. In turn, operating between the clandestine and the public locates these characters in a socially liminal space, visible but obscured. It also means blurring the boundaries between documentary and fiction. Music is simultaneously part of the reason for the characters’ marginality and an expression against this very marginality. Marooned in Iraq and Half-Moon in particular exemplify Ghobadi’s desire to ‘show that not one Kurd is stable; the Kurds are always on the move’ (Kutschera, 2003), sometimes voluntarily so but more often beyond their will. As if establishing the trilogy’s thematic and formal qualities, Marooned in Iraq begins with/in movement: a truck travels through Kurdistan, with many passengers on board and providing rides for those encountered along the way. Mirza and his two sons then trek through Kurdistan, which brings them in touch with similar ‘mobile’ communities and spaces, such as a tea house on a snow-filled mountain; a teacher and his students using the terrain as a classroom and moving whenever bombs or planes get too close; an orphanage; and evacuated villages. The Kurds’ constant movement stems principally from the paradox of being stateless yet being caught in wars between countries in which Kurdistan lies. The families and communities that populate the landscapes of Marooned in Iraq and Half-Moon are forcibly itinerant: they represent, literally and figuratively, the Kurdish people’s statelessness, marginalized status and fragmented, makeshift communities. But movement in these two films serves to simultaneously show Kurdish displacement and Kurdistan itself, which prompts Ghobadi to consistently choose camera angles and compositions that make ‘the landscape a dramatic character as much as the protagonist’ (Kilic, 2005). In Half-Moon, Mamo and his sons are better

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technologically equipped for their cross-border movement, with a bus as their vehicle – instead of a motorbike in Marooned in Iraq – and a digital camera to document their journey, courtesy of driver Kako. Kako’s belated discovery that there is no tape in the camera when he thought he had been documenting the journey resonates strongly in terms of tapping into minor cinema’s ‘missing people’. Music lines the physical movement undertaken by the characters and serves as a cultural constant in the absence of geographical and sociopolitical ones. While the circumstances are different, the musicians in No One Knows About Persian Cats are also forcibly itinerant. Due to government restrictions regarding music, Ashkan, Negar and others are compelled to continually move between cramped underground spaces like basements, faraway isolated places like a cow shed in the countryside, and unlikely transitional spots like a construction site to play, to make a music video and meet fellow musicians. In this way, movement and musical expression are very much intertwined. Each one motivates the other in all three narratives and so elaborates what Simon O’Sullivan termed as critique from within creativity in a minor art practice (2005). Moreover, all three films share the characteristic of staging encounters between the main protagonists and others during their journey that frequently give way to a musical performance. Ghobadi is concerned first and foremost with representing situations that reference directly the historical world and culture of his non-professional actors. He accomplishes this task precisely through the motif of a journey, whose motivation is music-related. But the cinematization of such situations also involves the stylistic choice of blending documentary and fiction. In turn, this stylistic choice impacts his approach to his actors: ‘Before filmmaking, I go to live with my characters. […] I observe them very closely, and then I ask them to repeat some of those parts the next day in front of the camera. I don’t give them unreal text; I want them to use their own lives. I take from them, and then I give back to them’ (Bloom, 2010). This characteristic of Ghobadi’s cinema has, in fact, been a prominent trait of contemporary Iranian cinema since the 1990s. Nodding to Kamran Shirdel’s pioneering work in the 1960s in the process, Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Samira Makhmalbaf and Jafar Panahi, among others, ‘have been exploring the confines and contours of a crossbreed format, establishing it as the artistic trademark of this national cinema’ (Landesman, 2003: 45). Significantly, Deleuze identifies the blending of documentary and fiction as a characteristic of minor cinema:



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The author must not […] make himself into the ethnologist of his people, nor himself invent a fiction which would be one more private story…[…]. There remains the possibility of the author providing himself with ‘intercessors’, that is, of taking real and not fictional characters, but putting these very characters in the condition of ‘making up fiction’, of ‘making legends’, of ‘story-telling’. The author takes a step towards his characters, but the characters take a step towards the author: double becoming. (Deleuze, 1989: 222)

Ghobadi’s ‘I take from them, and then I give back to them’ echoes rather closely Deleuze’s notion of a ‘double becoming’. Author and characters meet each other half way and together produce works that represent simultaneously fictional scenarios and actual lives, fictional lives and actual scenarios. In terms of form and performance, ultimately Ghobadi’s films channel minor cinema’s aesthetics of the ‘and’ most explicitly through music. In Marooned in Iraq, Half-Moon and No One Knows About Persian Cats are ‘embedded cultural [musical] performances and creative expressions [that] transform [these films] into cultural objects, which retain significance beyond their narratives’ (Major, 2012: 44). Given the still restricted status of Kurdish language/music and prohibited status of Western musical genres in Iran, these films’ significance surely lies in constituting the modern political cinema that Deleuze terms minor. Significantly, Ghobadi has pointed out, ‘We have never seen Kurds with cultural occupations, for example, a Kurdish musician, depicted in the movies. They always place political labels on the Kurds’ (Ghobadi, 2003). Musical performances in these films flesh out a rather thin premise of the search for someone or a remote destination. Hanareh in Marooned in Iraq, the final concert in Iraq in Half-Moon and the music festival in the UK in No One Knows About Persian Cats are certainly concrete goals for the characters, but ultimately they are general points of departure of journeys that explore Kurdish/Iranian musical and geographical landscapes. Musical performances often occur spontaneously, provoked by encounters with people along the way towards the intended destination, and in the process articulate collective, creative and cultural identities and political will. In truth, the main characters never fully reach the proclaimed destinations in the three films: Mirza never meets with Hanareh and instead accepts Hanareh’s daughter to take back to Iran at the Iran–Iraq border; Mamo never makes it to Iraq to give a final concert because he dies near the Iranian–Turkish border; and Ashkan and Negar never make it to the UK because they both die after police raid a party in Tehran. Ghobadi has stated, ‘The invisibility of the Kurds is exactly

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because of their voicelessness. If they could make themselves heard, they would have at least secured […] a minimum of measure of peace and security to live under [sic]’ (Ghobadi, 2003). Each of these conclusions is thus marked explicitly by a sudden voicelessness. Yet the filmic texts of musical Kurdish and Iranian performances themselves assure quite the opposite. In the three films, then, musical performances operate simultaneously as spectacle and as oral testimonies. While not negating the politics that impact Kurdish and Iranian populations, through elderly, established and famous singers like Mamo and Mirza in Marooned in Iraq and Half-Moon, respectively, and the young musicians in No One Knows About Persian Cats, Ghobadi conveys a sense of cultural and musical history that has been silenced, and a cultural and musical present being denied. At the same time, he provides a platform for musical performance in the films. Musical performances continually puncture and structure the narratives of all three films in a way that goes beyond the function of spectacle, as it would in a more common example of a musical. In Marooned in Iraq, musical performances frequently punctuate nearly each stop of Mirza and his sons’ journey to search for Hanareh. At a refugee camp, while Mirza searches for a contact, Audeh and Barat sing for children as they play the daf (Kurdish tambourine) and zurna (a Middle Eastern wind instrument). They do the same later in the film when they stop at an orphanage; they even leave their instruments with two of the orphans as a gesture of continuing the legacy of Kurdish music, despite broken family and community lines. On a related note, as a retired musician, Mirza teaches music to children with traditional Kurdish instruments, as seen at the beginning of the film. Another stop in a village finds Mirza and his sons enlisted by a man to perform at a wedding, with Mirza playing the kamancheh (Iranian fiddle) and one of the villagers accompanying them on the dohol (Kurdish drum). As with Audeh and Barat’s performance for the children at the refugee camp, here Ghobadi presents the father and sons’ performance as if he were documenting an official concert instead of a wedding staged for the camera, with the entire Kurdish village gathered around on roofs, terraces and the ground as the audience. As mentioned above, Ghobadi also employs music as a vehicle to address women’s invisibility and marginalization as well as to make them visible in ways that circumvent the prohibition of showing women singing. In the same village where Mirza and sons perform at a wedding, the shadow of a woman singing catches Barat’s attention and he immediately falls in love and asks for



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her hand. She would agree on one condition: that he teach her how to sing. He replies that singing is forbidden for women. So she leaves him. Linking most explicitly cross-border movement, marginality, women’s experiences, Kurdish culture and music is the fact that the song performed repeatedly by Audeh and Barat throughout the film is titled ‘Hanareh’. In this way, one can read the performance of the song as an expression of the silencing of women’s voices, as the title shares the name of the woman for whom they are searching On the one hand, Half-Moon is very similar to Marooned in Iraq in the way it involves a journey of a father and his sons, all of whom are musicians, from Iran to Iraq and the search for a woman. Father Mamo was banned from singing in Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s regime and the journey is ultimately about the opportunity to perform for the first time in thirty-five years after the fall of Hussein’s dictatorship, in a free Kurdistan. On the other hand, it contains little to no on-screen musical performances. In this way, its approach to music as a narrative impetus and mode of performance is more abstract and philosophical compared to both Marooned in Iraq and No One Knows About Persian Cats. When, at one point in their trek, border police detain Hesho and break the father and sons’ musical instruments as punishment, the significance of these acts goes beyond the narrative and resonates with Kurdish history. Also referring to the silencing of Kurdish voices, culture and subjectivities are scenes and symbols that relate to Mamo’s visions of his own death, which increase as he and his sons continue to find a way to Iraq despite a host of obstacles. At the Iranian–Turkish border, a young woman named Niwemang, or ‘Half-Moon’ (Golshifteh Farahani), finds the brothers on the road and offers to help them reach Iraq, with the instruments hidden in a coffin. Mamo then falls ill and finds refuge in the coffin, where he dies; inside his coat are music sheets for the concert. The film concludes with Niwemang and one of Mamo’s sons pulling the coffin across the Iranian–Turkish border and Kurdish musical expression arrested once more. But early in their journey, Mamo mentions a ‘celestial voice […] lost all those years. […] A voice that was killed, an extinct voice’. This voice is Hesho. Mamo insists on finding Hesho to participate in the performance in Iraq. To get Hesho, Mamo and company stop by a village carved out of the foot of a mountain, where 1,334 female singers have been exiled and live together, including Hesho. One of the film’s, if not the trilogy’s, most astonishingly visual and aural scenes is of the women, from the roofs and in the walkways, beating the daf in unison as Mamo escorts Hesho out of the village. As this scene unfolds, on the

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soundtrack is Iranian composer Alizadeh Hossein’s song ‘Laylahen’ (‘Moments for Joy and Mirth’). Despite the fact that the scene is not a live performance of the song, the suturing of voice and image gives the illusion that the voices come from the women onscreen. Moreover, with this scene Ghobadi cleverly manages to play with the ban and taboo of showing women singing in Iran. Though women are banned from performing as soloists in public, they are allowed to sing as a chorus. The audio performance of ‘Laylahen’, which groups many women’s voices into one, and the scene of the exiled singers, which distils their experiences into the body of one woman, reflect this particular ruling in Iran regarding women and music. While the ‘Laylahen’ scene is a solitary instance of musical staging and performance in Half-Moon, within the context of the three films it constitutes one of the most poignant and memorable scenes (see Figure 11). The clandestine element of musical expression in Half-Moon is also present in No One Knows About Persian Cats. Moreover, the clandestine element is much more pronounced here, as characters travel vertically more so than horizontally to be able to play music: they weave their way around the city through literally underground sites, several floors down, enclosed, accessible only via narrow stairways and by those in the know (see Figure 3). Ghobadi also provides a balance to the elderly, established and famous singer-characters like Mamo and Mirza in the previous two films by turning his attention mainly to the younger generations of struggling and underground musicians, in spite of the consequences: ‘Music has always been my issue, and in my previous films I could not directly deal with it because I was censoring myself and I was afraid. When I

Figure 11  No One Knows About Persian Cats (2009) © 2012, Mij Film



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made this film, I was aware that I would not be able to go back to Iran’ (Adams, 2011). The film’s point of departure is to look at young underground musicians in and around Tehran through Ashkan and Negar. In their search for band members, the film consists of a variety of musical acts that present different perspectives and textures of the city, accompanied by a particular rhythm and choice of images to capture their given genre of music: Hamed, a singer and guitarist; Rana Farhan and musicians in a recording studio with their faces blurred to keep their identities hidden; Aryan’s heavy metal band Nikarin, with Afshin, who perform in a stable way out of town; Koori, Sina and Soroosh’s band ‘Yellow Dogs’, which plays in a well-padded room on an apartment building roof to avoid having their neighbours, young and old, report them to the police; the Free Keys, who rehearse in a well-padded basement; the singer-guitarist who teaches songs to Iranian, Iraqi and Afghan kids all day, and is in Tehran traffic the rest of the time; Babak’s group Mirza, who performs for Ashkan and Negar at the recording studio; two sisters who sing and perform private concerts for a living; the group that Nadar calls the ‘kings of world music,’ with Nadar singing with them in the middle of an open field in the countryside; and finally rapper Hich Kas, who is shooting a music video atop a construction building site. Each group or musician has their reasons for playing music, their specific histories and experiences, which they are always already relating by their performances alone, given the status of music-making in Iran. The resulting film, more than any of the three, literally transforms musical performance into oral testimony. And more than any of the three, the film is like an audiovisual mixtape, where the narrative – of getting visas and forming a band – is of secondary importance to providing a transnational platform for the musical performances provided by each group or musician. The analogy is deliberate, for a mixtape is itself, among DJs and hip hop artists, a symbol of American youth and underground culture, a prominent influence among the musicians in the film, and it blurs the lines between private and public use, legal and illegal means, for recording and performance. The musical and non-musical performances in Marooned in Iraq, Half-Moon and No One Knows About Persian Cats testify to marginalized communities of Kurdish Iranians, women and youth engaging in music-making as a way to resist their marginality. Taken together, Ghobadi strikes the figure of an oral historian collecting and archiving songs before they die out or are rendered forgotten.

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Conclusion Like songs on a mixtape, Marooned in Iraq, Half-Moon and No One Knows About Persian Cats can be approached as individual films or as a collective articulation of musical expression, ‘to constitute an assemblage which brings real parties together, in order to make them produce collective utterances as the prefiguration of the people who are missing’ (Deleuze, 1989: 224). This chapter examined Bahman Ghobadi’s work, specifically the three aforementioned films, to argue for a minor cinematic practice that is specific to both Gilles Deleuze’s description of a modern political cinema and Ghobadi’s own sociopolitical aims and concerns with regards to Kurdish culture and history, women’s experiences and younger generations. Ghobadi’s minor cinematic practice hinges precisely on the prominent role that music plays in these films compared to his other work. Musical expression functions not only as spectacle but also as a vehicle to acknowledge their marginality; an outlet for their marginalized voices; and ultimately as a form of oral testimony that makes of these films social documents as well as artistic objects. To argue for Ghobadi’s minor cinematic practice, I examined closely the thematic, performative and narrative aspects that link these three films in dialogue with Deleuze’s elaboration of the minor, with particular focus on cross-border movement, the blurring of documentary and fiction, and the function of musical performances.

References Adams, S. (2011). ‘Interview: No One Knows About Persian Cats. Filmmakers Bahman Ghobadi and Roxana Saberi’. A.V. Club. Available online: http://www.avclub.com/ article/ino-one-knows-about-persian-catsi-filmmakers-bahma-53341 [accessed 10 June 2013]. Benedikt, A. (2009) ‘Iranian Filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi on Ahmadinejad’s Repressive Regime, the Disputed Election, and the Youth of Tehran’. The Village Voice. Available online: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2009/06/interview_ irani.php [accessed 30 September 2013]. Bloom, L. (2010) ‘Bahman Ghobadi on Improvisation, “Persian Cats,” and Kiarostami’. Filmmaker Magazine. Available online: http://filmmakermagazine.com/6910bahman-ghobadi-on-improvisation-persian-cats-and-kiarostami/#.UxJ2hE2A3IU [accessed 1 September 2013].



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Deleuze, G. (1989) Cinema 2: The Time Image, trans. H. Tomlinson and R. Galeta. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1986) Kafka: Toward A Minor Literature, trans. D. Polan. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ghobadi, B. (2003) Interview with B. Ghobadi. Marooned in Iraq [DVD]. Wellspring Media. Hall, S. (1997) ‘The Work of Representation’, in S. Hall (ed.) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage Publications: 15–64. Kilic, D. (2005) ‘The Representation of Kurdish Identity and Culture in the Films of Bahman Ghobadi’. Kurdishmedia.com. Available online: http://www.kurdishcinema. com/KurdsinBahmanGhobadi.html [accessed 26 October 2013]. Kutschera, C. (2003) ‘Kurdistan Iran: Bahman Ghobadi and the Pain of Giving Birth to Kurdish Cinema’. Available online: http://www.chris-kutschera.com/A/bahman_ ghobadi.htm [accessed 6 November 2013]. Landesman, O. (2006) ‘In the Mix: Reality Meets Fiction in Contemporary Iranian Cinema’. Cineaste, 31 (3): 45–7. Major, A. P. (2012) Bahman Ghobadi’s Hyphenated Cinema: An Analysis of Hybrid Authorial Strategies and Cinematic Aesthetics, MA thesis, Austin: University of Texas at Austin. O’Sullivan, S. (2005) ‘Towards A Minor Art Practice’. Drain 2 (2). Available online: http://www.drainmag.com/contentNOVEMBER/RELATED_ESSAYS/Notes_ Towards_Minor_Practice.htm [accessed 15 September 2013]. Parr, A. (ed.) (2010) The Deleuze Dictionary. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Rodowick, D. N. (1997) Gilles Deleuze’s Time Machine. Durham: Duke University Press. Scarlet, P. (2007) ‘Kurdish Director, Stuck Between Iran and Iraq’, New York Times. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/movies/16scar.html?_r=0 [accessed 2 July 2013].

9

Subtle Idiosyncracy: Sound and Music in the Australian Animated Short Film The Lost Thing (2010) Rebecca Coyle, Jon Fitzgerald and Philip Hayward1

Introduction Animated film production began in Australia in the pre-synch sound era and continued intermittently through to the late 1950s when television broadcasting commenced and began to offer expanded opportunities for local producers. Australia’s first locally produced animated feature film, Eric Porter’s Marco Polo and the Red Dragon, was produced in 1972 but arguably the most significant local venture in this period was the production operation established by Polish producer-director Yoram Gross, who relocated to Sydney from Israel in 1968. In addition to producing short-form material, such as animation sequences for the popular TV music show Bandstand, the company went on to produce commercially successful Australian animation features such as Dot and the Kangaroo (1977) and Blinky Bill (1992), the latter being released in the same year as another internationally successful Australian animation feature film Fern Gully (dir: Bill Kroyer, 1992). In tandem with these production activities, Australian animation talent was also honed by working with the Disney subsidiary Animation Australia, which operated in Sydney between 1988 and 2006.2 More recently, a lively independent sector has developed producing short films, music videos and experimental items. This sector has recently come to prominence with the success of animators such as Adam Elliot and Shaun Tan, who, respectively, won Academy Awards (‘Oscars’) for best short animation films in 2004 (for Harvey Crumpet) and in 2011 (for The Lost Thing). One of the significant aspects of Elliott’s and Tan’s work is that they have achieved international recognition for productions whose aesthetics are informed by place and

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Australian culture – arguably, an element that gives them a sense of freshness and difference from their North American contemporaries. This article analyses the soundtrack of Tan’s The Lost Thing and the manner in which it imparts a particular sense of mood and place that reflects the product’s cultural points of inspiration. As a number of authors have identified,3 screen animation provides rich opportunities for sound and music, given that there is no location sound to work with and its audio-visual worlds are thereby entirely created. Animation often calls for much more music than live action, in order to provide continuity and flow, and music and sound are regularly called on to assist in defining objects and characters, giving them scale, scope and specific profiles through their sonic dimensions. Characters are also given expressive range through their sound. In this manner, animation is a demanding medium for sound designers and musicians since music and sound need to work with the contrived motion, location and the interaction of characters with their imagined world. In addition, any abstract concepts that the film conveys or explores also need to be developed using music and sound. Aside from the early work of Hill (1998), Australian animation media soundtracks have been largely overlooked by academics and journalists and this article provides a step towards a more sustained investigative engagement with the form and its local particularities through detailed analysis of one particular production.

Context One element that Elliot and Tan share is a deployment of narrative to explore abstract concepts through a reflective – rather than action-driven – approach. Elliot and Tan also pursue a distinctly urban aesthetic. Their work employs visuals that are highly stylized yet intrinsically realist. Images are often muted in texture and contrast and show untidy and decidedly un-glamorous locales appropriate to their films’ urban locations and themes. The directors’ work also evinces a certain laconic cynicism combined with a sense of nostalgia that might also be argued to represent a distinctly Australian sensibility. Tan’s The Lost Thing typifies this approach and, indeed, his overall oeuvre is suffused by it. Tan grew up in the northern suburbs of Perth (Western Australia) and began drawing and painting images for science fiction and horror stories in smallpress magazines as a teenager. After graduating from the University of Western



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Australia in 1995 (with a Bachelor of Arts), he moved across the continent and currently works full-time as a freelance artist and author based in Melbourne. Tan has become best known for illustrated books that deal with social, political and historical subjects through surreal, dream-like imagery. Books such as his collaboration with popular Australian young adult fiction writer John Marsden, The Rabbits (1998), and sole authored and illustrated volumes such as The Red Tree (2002), Tales from Outer Suburbia (2008) and his wordless graphic novel The Arrival (2006), have been widely praised and translated into many languages. Tan has also worked as a theatre designer and as a visual concept artist on the films Horton Hears a Who (Jimmy Hayward, 2008) and Pixar’s WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008). Tan’s film adaptation of his book ‘The Lost Thing’ was made in collaboration with British producer-director Andrew Ruhemann. Ruhemann began working for Richard Williams’ studio in the late 1980s, contributing to productions such as Robert Zemeckis’ 1988 feature Who Framed Roger Rabbit? before establishing the company Passion Pictures, whose initial work had a similar emphasis on classical 2D character animation and special effects. In recent years Passion Pictures’ range of styles has expanded to include stop frame and computer animation (see, for instance, the first four Gorillaz music videos4). Tan initially wrote ‘The Lost Thing’ in 1998 and developed it into a 32-page illustrated book that was published in 2000. The work’s narrative involves a boy who discovers a bizarre-looking creature while out collecting bottle tops at the beach. Realizing that it is lost, he tries to find out who owns it or where it belongs. He is met with indifference – people are either completely oblivious to the creature’s presence, or, at best, they barely notice it. The boy empathizes with the creature, and sets out to find a ‘place’ for it. The narrative unfolds in a surreal world that is rather bleak but in a slightly comic way – with the main protagonists wending their way through a treeless, urban environment with odd-looking people and hybrid, machine-like creatures. Fittingly, in this regard, the visual design of Tan’s ‘lost thing’ bears more than passing resemblance to Dadaist/Surrealist painter Max Ernst’s fantastical quasi-mechanical ‘Elephant Celebes’ in his eponymous 1921 painting but without the unsettling, grey, mechanical otherness of the latter’s ‘elephant’ creature. Indeed, one of the most original and striking aspects of Tan’s creation is its appeal. As one reviewer colourfully characterized, referring primarily to the ‘thing’s’ rendition in the film version: ‘the first thing that struck me … is how fricking adorable it is. It is never revealed what the thing could be – it’s difficult to even lump it into one

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of the animal, vegetable or mineral categories (steampunk hermit crab squidplant?) – but it’s certainly hella cute’ (Camilleri, 2010: online). After encountering the publication at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in 2000, Ruhemann approached Tan to collaborate on adapting ’The Lost Thing’ into an animation film. Storyboarding was completed in 2001 and 2002, adapting the 32-page book into a 15-minute narrative, and the film’s visuals were created in collaboration with CGI artist Tom Bryant and artist Leo Baker. Tan has elaborated that his adaptation fulfilled his original impression of the project in that: In re-creating the story from the ground up, we’ve elaborated some aspects of the ‘Lost Thing universe’ which could not be entirely expressed within the confines of the original 32-page book. In fact, I always saw the story in my imagination as a short film or theatrical piece, where the book presents us with a set of stills from some larger production. The key character, a faceless creature, has an inherently animated personality which a painting struggles to convey – and finds its full expression in the medium of film … I’m more accustomed to working with still, silent pictures that allow a viewer plenty of time to contemplate individual compositions. Animation is a very different medium, where questions of time and pace are much more critical, not to mention layers of sound and music. (Tan, 2010: online)

In order to realize and expand Tan’s narrative and thematic vision through sound, Tan and co-director Ruhemann employed an experienced production team to create a distinct soundscape for the film.

The soundscape team The soundtrack for The Lost Thing integrates three primary elements – sound design/Foley, spoken narration and original music. The sound design and Foley layers were provided by Melbourne DJ, remixer and sound designer John Kassab and experienced sound recordist and Foley artist Adrian Medhurst (who had previously worked on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy [2001–3] and Sarah Watt’s combined live action and animation feature Look Both Ways [2005]). The narration was provided by comedic singer-songwriter and cabaret artist Tim Minchin, a performer known for his droll and laconic vocal delivery. The original score was provided by composer Michael Yezerski (who



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had previously scored Elissa Down’s 2008 feature The Black Balloon). Yezerski was the only team member with previous experience in engaging with Tan’s work, having collaborated with violinist Richard Tognetti to write a concert piece based around Tan’s novel ‘The Red Tree’ that was performed by a chamber orchestra and the 40-member children’s Gondwa Voices choir along with projected illustrations from Tan’s original book (see Wilson, 2008). Research conducted by co-authors Coyle and Hayward for their 2007–11 Australia Research Council funded project on the Australian film music and sound production sector5 identified a number of aspects of national practice that differed from that of the North American film industry. Whereas the scale and volume of productions in North America has resulted in both a high degree of role specialization and relatively autonomous creative activities – which are then crafted into the final audio-visual text by sound editors adept at integrating the various sonic elements – the typically low-budget nature of Australian production and the more limited work opportunities on offer has led to a multi-skilled, flexible and adaptable pool of professionals who are comfortable with (and often actively interested in) creative collaboration and dialogue. The production history of The Lost Thing exemplifies this aspect of the national sector. The film’s soundtrack was devised over a six-month period, a relatively long gestation for the creation of sound for a short film. Kassab notes that this facilitated an unusually high level of collaboration in combining sound and visual elements (even noting that national tendency identified above): working at the same time as animation and assembly gave the sound department collaborative input on the way some of the cuts were made to retain the musical and rhythmic integrity of the sound design. It’s a truly rare thing when a sound designer can ask picture department for a few more or less frames here and there to make the sound work better (in Isaza, 2011: online).

A similarly close level of collaboration was evident within the sound team itself. While Kassab notes that his normal process is to create the internal sounds and vocalizations and provide notes on external sounds for the Foley artist; the closeness of the collaboration on The Lost Thing regularly led to a blurring of boundaries. As he has identified ‘as sound people working with a fun character like this, we couldn’t help ourselves and we both over-stepped those boundaries on every occasion completely merging our roles beyond those of sound designer or Foley artist respectively’ (ibid).

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Kassab displayed an equally collaborative attitude in relation to his work with composer Michael Yezerski: a lot of the discussion surrounded the types of instruments that Michael [Yezerski] was going to use in different scenes, and so I went through and revised a lot of the scenes that we had originally by taking out a lot of the bass frequencies if there were gonna be, like, bass instruments coming through or vice-versa, so that each didn’t clash on the other (Kassab, interview in Coleman, nd: online).

Kassab also acknowledges the input of re-recording mixer Doron Kipen ‘who refined our work further to fit around the music and voice over’ (in Isaza, 2011: online). Finally, although Tim Minchin cannot be seen as an ongoing member of the sound ‘team’ in the same manner as the personnel discussed above (given that he recorded his narration independently with Tan), the importance of his input should not be underestimated. Tan has identified that Minchin was chosen for the role for his particular persona: He’s a very eloquent, articulate person … quite intellectual but in the same sense, laid back and has a certain casualness in his approach … and I think to some extent he might have been able to identify with the character ‘cos we’re both West Australians … there’s something about the world of The Lost Thing that has a West Australian feel to me, a sense of very long sunburnt childhood … with vast amounts of space and not a lot going on and it creates a certain sense of isolated reflection (‘The Lost Thing Voice Record Session with Tim Minchin’, video, 2010: online).

Appropriately in this regard, Minchin’s voice incorporates characteristic AngloAustralian speech mannerisms, as well as a laconic delivery that connects with the laid-back ‘Aussie’ stereotype and the unhurried nature of the existential narrative. Since the vocal track has a limited volume, pitch and tonal range, it functions as a relatively constant and predictable element for the sound and music to weave around.

The unfolding soundscape of The Lost Thing In order to illustrate ways in which sound, music and narration are used to enhance narrative, visual and emotional elements in The Lost Thing, the following section of this article provides a detailed scene-by-scene description



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and musicological and sonological characterization of the film’s unfolding soundscape6 that is subsequently interpreted in Section IV. As the film credits appear on screen, a soft ‘white noise’ synth sound is joined by a sweet, spacious guitar melody set in the bright-sounding upper register and played over a bed of slowly changing chords. The guitar melody is very simple (see Example 1), as is the accompanying chord progression (C–Ami7) – the latter also providing an immediate sense of major/minor ambiguity. The instrumental melody is immediately joined by a range of sound effects associated with the on-screen arrival and departure of a train. This provides an early contrast between musical and non-musical sound, and hints that both will play important roles within the ensuing animation. The third important sound element (the narrator’s voice) is introduced at 00.35, completing the set of sound material (i.e. instrumental music, Foley/sound effects, human voice) that is carefully interwoven throughout the fifteen-minute narrative. The sound of the narrator’s voice is notable for its understated, ‘deadpan’ character – with very little contour in terms of volume and pitch range – and the voice is intentionally highlighted through being placed over a minimal background of soft sustained ‘synth’ sounds.

Example 1

As the narration continues, a variety of sounds is used to underscore changing visual elements, as the main human character (a boy apparently in his teens) walks onto a sandy beach. These delicate and subtle sounds, placed low in the mix, include footsteps, rustling newspaper, seagull cries, rippling water, and bells. As the ‘lost thing’ first comes into view (1.17), a new bright guitar theme makes a sudden, surprising entrance. This theme parallels the opening guitar theme by taking the form of a slow, sustained melodic idea and another two-chord, major to minor progression a third apart (in this case Cadd9–Emi). Non-musical sounds come into prominence as the boy taps on a door on the side of the ‘lost thing’, which comes to life and moves around in response. Removal of the instrumental music at this point helps to highlight a range of interesting and varied mechanical sound effects associated with the odd,

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machine-like creature. Mechanical sounds include metallic-sounding creaks, thumps/bangs, roars and groans, and there are more bell sounds. Instrumental music re-enters at 2.31 after the ‘lost thing’ throws a beach ball to the boy and after they begin to play together. This happy-sounding rhythmic idea features a repetitive guitar motif supported by sustained synth strings and percussion. A simple major-key melody highlights the semitone between octave and major seventh scale degree (see Example 2).

Example 2

A siren sound at 3.00 (indicating the impending closure of the beach/ playground) signals a change of direction in the narrative, and an associated change in the sound focus. As the game between the boy and the ‘lost thing’ ceases, instrumental music is again removed to highlight a range of interesting sounds (including loudspeaker noises, closing beach umbrellas, seagulls, creaking wheels); after which the narration is foregrounded. Instrumental music re-enters at 3.18, in the form of slow echoing sounds plus warm, processed guitar sounds. At 3.35 another simple guitar melody enters (see Example 3) and the accompanying chord progression (Emi–Cmaj7) represents a reversal/inversion of previous patterns. At this point music takes the leading role in setting a poignant mood that matches the narration ‘no denying the unhappy truth – it was lost’ and complements images of the ‘lost thing’ wandering around, ignored by all. Music fades out from 4.07, allowing attention to return to the narration, then the Emi–C progression re-enters at 4.35. A section of narration is followed by a brief piece of music, and then the narrator sums up the opening section, saying ‘Some things are like that; they’re just plain lost.’ A very loud train sound and full-screen image of a large moving train provide an emphatic ending to this section of the animation.

Example 3



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The next section begins at 5.06 with the boy deciding to take the ‘lost thing’ home. A lengthy period (over 30 seconds) ensues in which music is entirely absent, leaving narration and sound effects to provide the aural interest as the boy brings the ‘lost thing’ into his lounge room and then takes it to hide in the back shed. By now, the sound of bells (especially those attached to the ‘lost thing’) has begun to assume a leitmotiv role within the animation. As the boy tries to make the ‘lost thing’ feel at home in the back shed, narration ceases, and music again comes into focus to provide support for the emotional content of the film. A variant of the first instrumental melody re-enters at 5.54; then at 6.33 the music becomes rhythmic and much louder in the mix, featuring a series of synth arpeggios and heavy low guitar notes. This section of music (together with a range of varied sound effects) underscores a scene in which the boy and ‘lost thing’ interact in a gentle, mutually supportive manner, as the ‘lost thing’ carefully sets up a ladder for the boy to climb so that he can ‘feed’ it. Music is again removed at the beginning of the new section – which begins at 6.55 with the narrator enunciating the boy’s perception, saying ‘The lost thing seemed happy then, but I sure couldn’t keep it in the shed forever.’ Visual attention is first focused on the interior of the boy’s home, with the soundtrack foregrounding an extended section of diegetic sound (in the form of a spoken TV advertisement for the ‘Federal Department of Odds and Ends’). As the boy and ‘lost thing’ make their way into the city on a tram and then enter a large grey building, a variety of sounds (including footsteps, tram sounds, doors slamming) are used to complement related visual images. Inside the building, the dark and eerie visual elements are effectively supported by eerie sounds – such as (soft and loud) white noise and whistling, wind-like sounds. The only ‘music’ at this point consists of a few sustained single electronic-sounding tones, while ubiquitous rattling bell sounds provide a continuing reminder of the presence of the ‘lost thing’. At 8.38 the impact of the sudden appearance of a spotlight on the boy is accentuated by a jarring, electronic-sounding buzz, and the boy looks up to a distant receptionist and tells her he has a ‘lost thing’. After she instructs him, in a bored monotone voice, to ‘fill in the form’ a rumbling mechanical noise crescendos ominously until the visuals lead to a metal locker that opens to reveal a large pile of forms. The spotlight is suddenly switched off, and the boy and ‘lost thing’ are left alone to grapple with uncaring bureaucracy in the dimly lit, minimally furnished building. The soundscape at this point is correspondingly minimal, with just an occasional rustling of papers disturbing the silence.

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Just as everything seems to be going from bad to worse, some hope is revived by the appearance of a small, rat-like, mechanical creature that is sweeping the floor of the building. In whispered undertones, the creature urges the boy not to leave the ‘lost thing’ in this ‘place for forgetting, leaving behind’. A short sequence of increasingly high-range bell sounds provides a subtle aural hint of hope. After the narrator says, ‘It was some kind of sign, I guess’ (9.57) another dramatic change in the visuals signals a new section within the film. A brightly lit, full screen image of a collage of city signs (including ‘No Parking’ and ‘No Entry’ signs, and humorous offerings such as ‘Sign Not In Use’) appears suddenly, and the boy ponders the note (with an arrow) that the small creature had handed him just earlier. The ‘lost thing’, seemingly energized by this development, begins to move off as if in search of something, and music is again called on as to underscore the prevailing emotional tone (in this case happier and more upbeat). The music track begins (at 10.12) with a light, rhythmic counterpoint of tuned percussion instruments, which is subsequently joined by rich sustained synth string chords and some low bass frequencies. The chord progressions (Cmaj7– Emi7; C6/9–Emi7) represent further small variations of the original two-chord, major to minor idea; and the sound of the ‘lost thing’s’ bells merge seamlessly into the overall musical texture. As the narration resumes (at 10.56) the music is gradually faded out, leaving just the narrator’s voice and the sound of the ‘lost thing’s’ bells. Suspense is created by a period of near silence as the boy notices a large door with a key and decides to open it to see what is on the other side. Electronic sounds add to the suspense as a small light shines through an opening in the door, and the door finally opens. At 11.47 the opening musical theme is suddenly recapped as light streams in on the boy and the ‘lost thing’, providing a brightening of the visual elements as well as offering a symbol of hope. As they enter what appears to be a stadium, they begin to notice some strange machine-creatures. After the relative drabness of the urban scenes, the stadium offers a vibrant scenario of odd and colourful creatures – many of which are sound-producing objects (such as an accordion, large bell, mechanical industrial artifacts, a TV fish, a beating heart, and bird-like flying objects). At first, the soundtrack highlights sound effects linked specifically to some of the individual creatures, but at 12.01 these sounds virtually disappear as the musical track moves emphatically into the foreground. The new musical theme is a bright, rhythmic ‘Chet Atkins’-style guitar pattern, supported at first by percussion sounds and then by synth strings. This theme is



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developed into the longest piece of continuous music in the film (more than one minute) by expanding the earlier two-chord vocabulary into a repeated four-bar progression (C–Emi/B–Ami–Emi/B), and even taking a temporary excursion into a different key centre (Bb). After this rhythmic theme ceases (at 13.07), variants of several earlier musical ideas appear in turn to underscore visuals that depict the ‘lost thing’ deciding to join its new ‘friends’ and say goodbye to the boy. The second theme (see Example 2) is briefly recapped in a lower octave with a warmer guitar sound, while the third idea (see Example 3) appears in a lower register and at a much slower tempo. When the ‘lost thing’ turns it back on the stadium to say its goodbyes to the boy, rhythmic arpeggios are constructed from the C– Emi progression used earlier in the animation. The leitmotiv bell sounds are foregrounded as the boy touches ‘hands/claws’ with the ‘lost thing’ in a gentle parting gesture, and the lengthy stadium scene ends with the closure of the large entrance door and a low, resounding thump. Music is absent from the entire closing section, leaving narration and various electronic and mechanical sound effects to carry the soundtrack. Train sounds and images provide an aural and visual link to the opening scenes, and the narrator offers some wistful comments about losing the ability to notice lost things. The final credits are accompanied by train sounds and gentle electronic rumbles, and the animation ends with a brief view (and sound) of the rat-like, mechanical floor sweeper – the overall audio-visual effect being a pronounced diminuendo.

Style, anachronism and idiosyncracy Kassab has characterized the manner in which Tan envisaged a world for The Lost Thing Tan ‘powered by steam, clogs and gears’; one which was ‘futuristic in its rate of expansion and apparent lack of humanity but was still so old-fashioned in the way it operated and the technology it used’ (Kassab, in Isaza, 2011: online). While the sound designer does not use the specific term, the description of the brief he was given is closely akin to that of the ‘Steampunk’ aesthetic. This aesthetic, and a subsequent genre embodying it, was first recognized in the work of a number of authors in the 1980s and 1990s (see Robb, 2012 for discussion). While the aesthetic has been most prevalent in literature it has also been represented on-screen in feature films such as Stephen Norrington’s eponymous

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adaptation of Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s graphic narrative ‘The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’ (2003) or Barry Sonnenfeld’s eccentric big-budget epic Wild Wild West (1999). The genre has also spawned a youth subcultural scene in Western Europe and North America that has developed distinct styles and iconographies based on Victorian-era technologies extrapolated into an alternative future. One significant element of this scene has been the development of a network of Steampunk musicians and bands. While the Steampunk aspects of these acts has often been primarily evident in their visual appearance and/or lyrics, some observers identified a distinct sonic approach prevalent in the late 2000s based on ‘sonorous, half-spoken vocals and melancholy melodies influenced by Tom Waits and eastern European Gypsy bands’ (Sullivan, 2008: online). More recently however, musician Janus Zarate of Steampunk band Vernian Process, have produced far less prescriptive definitions based on sensibilities rather than sounds: The literature provides the substance, and new technologies provide the instruments. Ultimately, the selections hardly comprise a traditional genre, but they make for a satisfying playlist of musicians … How then should we define the music of steampunk, if not by genre? We need only turn to its heritage – not just to the artists of our time, but to their musical and non-musical predecessors … We must bring the spirit of anachronism to the music, forging innovation from the melding of past and present. (Zarate, 2011: online)

While there is no evidence that any of the film’s production personnel consciously engaged with Steampunk discussions (or precedents), we can see them as negotiating similar issues in addressing their creative brief for the film. Appropriately, with regard to the above discussions, the general brief given to the sound team employed by Tan and Ruhermann was that ‘this is a mechanical world … and this whole digital thing really doesn’t exist’ (Kassab, interview in Coleman, n.d: online). Although The Lost Thing employs CG (computer graphics), Tan describes the film as embodying ‘a unique aesthetic that avoids the artificiality of CG objects; almost every surface is essentially hand-painted using non-digital materials: acrylic paint, pencil, oils and collage’ (2010: online). In keeping with this ‘low-tech’ orientation, the soundtrack largely avoids digitally created sound effects in favour of recorded sound material. As a result, the creation of sounds became an extremely complex and lengthy process. As Kassab has identified: In this 15 min film, there are 22 locations and 74 characters and all required stylized sounds. As the worlds and characters did not exist in our own world,



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each needed extensive analysis, conceptualization and experimentation. Even the ‘human’ characters had unfamiliar dimensions and walking styles, requiring unique sound treatments. This led to the recording of over 1800 sounds and a total of 13 months of work between myself and the wonderfully gifted Foley artist, Adrian Medhurst. (Kassab, n.d: online)

The complexity of the sound creation task reached a peak in the so-called ‘Utopia’ theme (in which the ‘lost thing’ discovers a stadium full of potential new ‘friends’). During this part of the animation, Kassab and Medhurst faced the challenge of creating distinct sounds associated with around forty different mechanical creatures. Kassab recalls the added pressure of feeling ‘constantly fearful of letting down the fans of the original book’ (in Isaza, 2011: online). The primary functions of non-musical sound are to emphasize aspects of changing environments and environmental ‘atmospheres’, and to provide characteristic aural signatures for some of the mechanical creatures (that also conform to the innately anachronistic tendency so beloved of Steampunk aficionados, as discussed above). For example, train sounds regularly provide a sense of the urban environment (as well as symbolizing the overall ‘journey’ through the narrative). Delicate individual sounds (such as rustling newspaper, seagull cries, and rippling water) provide a strong sense of the beach environment; while the eerie atmosphere inside the dark building is enhanced by the sparse placement of a variety of eerie sound effects (such as whistling ‘wind’ sounds). Sound effects (such as metallic-sounding creaks, rattles, thumps/bangs, and the ubiquitous bells) are especially important in providing the ‘lost thing’ with an aural signature. As sound designer, Kassan also took primary responsibility for the selection, manipulation and placement of subtle sustained sounds that provide subtle atmospheric and character-enhancing effects at various places throughout the film, a process he has described as using ‘a lot of soft synthesis in the creation of the musical and sub bass sounds’ (in Isaza, 2011). Composer Michael Yezerski created a range of original music that also fitted with the ‘low-tech’ philosophy of the general brief provided to the sound team by using the ‘natural’ sounds of acoustic guitar and (tuned and unturned) percussion instruments rather than succumbing to the temptation of using quirky ‘electronic’ sounds to characterize the film’s quirky cityscapes, landscapes and creatures. The accessible and seductive instrumental timbres, appealing melodic ideas and simple harmonies and rhythms have a subtly idiosyncratic aspect that is are also consistent with Ruhemann’s desire for Tan’s work to reach an international audience.

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Music plays an important role in setting a general tone for the film at the beginning. The sound of the spacious acoustic guitar theme over a bed of slowly changing chords hints at the laconic, contemplative, happy/sad tone of the film. From then on, the main role of musical sound is to enhance the emotional impact of scenes, especially those involving interaction between the boy and the ‘lost thing’. For example, happy-sounding instrumental music underscores the scene in which the ‘lost thing’ and the boy play ball together, while music plays the leading role in setting a poignant mood around the time when the boy/narrator says ‘no denying the unhappy truth – it was lost’. Music is again prominent (along with some varied sound effects) in setting a gentle emotional tone when the ‘lost thing’ helps the boy to feed it. A happier musical tone is used when the boy and the ‘lost thing’ leave the dark building and set off to follow the note provided by the rat-like machine creature. The happiest scene of all – the ‘Utopia’ or stadium scene – is notable for the way in which happy-sounding music comes into the foreground to help set the emotional tone; and music plays the leading role in underscoring the happy/ sad emotions surrounding the final goodbyes between the boy and the lost thing. Music also plays a role in inserting aural ‘colours’ that offer some respite from the somewhat bleak environmental sounds associated with many of the urban locales. In the same way that the redness of the ‘lost thing’ stands out from the greys of the urban settings (even at the beach), bright musical timbres (for example, steel-string acoustic guitar, marimbas, xylophone, glockenspiel) contrast with duller and lower-frequency sounds (such as background hums and general traffic noise). As previously noted, the third sound element – the narrator’s voice – is notable for its laconic, ‘deadpan’ quality. In addition to having very little contour in terms of volume and pitch range, the vocal sound is also notable for its timbral ‘dullness’, with mid and bass frequencies dominating over high frequencies. The technique of highlighting the narration by employing it on its own, or with a minimal sound and/or music background, serves two functions within the film. As well as bringing important narrative developments (and associated philosophical musings) into clear focus, it allows the vocal timbre to function as a recurring block of relatively colourless sound, against which varied musical and sound-effect colours are contrasted. Ultimately, one of the most striking things about the use of sound and music in The Lost Thing is the way in which the three sound elements – instrumental music, Foley/sound effects, human voice – are so effectively interwoven and



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contrasted throughout the fifteen-minute narrative. As the earlier sceneby-scene description of the unfolding soundscape indicates, the focus of the soundtrack continually alternates between music, sound and narration, and there is considerable variation in the way these elements are combined. The meticulous combining of sound elements also plays a important role in creating the conspicuously spacious and uncluttered quality of the soundtrack. As sound designer Kassab notes: ‘With so much going on in every scene, it was all about weaving all of the elements in and around each other to tell the story of character and place whilst taking care not to overcrowd the track at any one point’ (in Isaza, 2011: online). The issue of sonic ‘overcrowding’ was particularly relevant in dealing with the very busy ‘Utopia’ scene with its stadium full of mechanical creatures; and the manner in which the sound team dealt with this challenge offers further insight into the highly collaborative creative atmosphere that characterized the making of the film. Kassab describes how he (and Foley artist Medhurst) painstakingly created individual sounds for each of the machine-creatures in the scene, only to see these sounds abandoned in favour of the prominent music track that allowed the scene to be more emotional and less mechanical (Kassab, in Coleman, n.d.). Even more significantly, this process emphasizes the sound team’s ultimate commitment to serve the vision of the directors, rather than merely display their individual creative talents: ‘What we’d hoped is that the audience member would never really be aware of sound versus music but be an audience member who was following the story and the emotional intent of the directors’ (Kassab, in Coleman, n.d: online).

Conclusion As discussed in Section II, Tan has emphasized his film’s roots in what he perceives as a Western Australian sensibility, characterized by spaciousness, stasis and a general sense of remoteness, producing a sense of lackadaisical disengagement from the everyday world. The latter elements are evident in the thematic unfolding and tonal qualities of The Lost Thing’s drama. The slowmoving pace of the film allows viewers time to savour the distinctive narrative, visual and aural elements; and the meticulous placement and blending of music, sound effects, Foley and narration adds considerably to the spacious and uncluttered quality of the film. Our earlier references to surreal aspects of the

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visual imagination of the film are both general (i.e. small ‘s’ surreal) and specific (as in the ‘lost thing’s’ previously noted resemblance to Max Ernst’s ‘Elephant Celebes’) and are elements that operate in an urban space characterized by its languidity. While the urban locales and odd technologies depicted in the film are somewhat unsettling, and evoke elements of Steampunk fiction and iconography, any threats they pose are muted and, as in the hall of the Department of Odds and Ends, quaintly Kafkaesque. While the inspirational cultural contexts of works are rarely – if ever – deterministic, Tan’s film and its soundtrack can be interpreted as a distinctly local product and, thereby, as an expression of a particularly idiosyncratic sensibility; one where art historical and sonic references are localized and reinflected to create a novel use of the medium and a highly distinctive animation film text.

Acknowledgements Thanks to Rosa Coyle-Hayward for her contribution to the original conference paper upon which this article is based.7

Notes 1 This article is an expanded version of an unpublished paper by Rebecca Coyle and Rosa Coyle-Hayward entitled ‘Sounding Out Contemporary Australian Animation’ delivered at the 2012 Society for Animation Studies Conference at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. 2 Contributing to Disney features such as The Return of Jafar (1994, directed by Tad Stones and Alan Zaslove) and Aladdin and the King of Thieves (1996, Tad Stones). 3 See, for instance Coyle (ed.) (2010) and the bibliography of critical works on animation sound tracks in Coyle (2010: 19–22). 4 Clint Eastwood (2001), 19–1000 (2001), Rock The House (2001) and Tomorrow Comes Today (2002). 5 DP0770026 ‘Music Production and Technology in Australian Film: Enabling Australian Film to Embrace Innovation’, 2007–11, chief investigators: Rebecca Coyle, Michael Hannan and Philip Hayward. 6 Timing references identified below are taken from http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=T48d1STzdnM 7 See footnote 1 to this chapter.



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References Camilleri, Adam (2010) ‘The Lost Thing’ (review) The Beat. Available online: http:// www.beat.com.au/arts/2011/01/17/lost-thing/arts-cinema-dvd-dvd-review-reviewlost-thing [accessed May 2013]. Coleman, Michael (n.d.). ‘The Sound of “The Lost Thing” ’ (behind the scenes video). Available online: http://soundworkscollection.com/thelostthing [accessed February 2013] Coyle, Rebecca (2010) ‘Introduction: Audio Motion: Animating (Film) Sound’, in Rebecca Coyle (ed.) Drawn to Sound: Animation Film Music and Sonicity, London: Equinox Books: 1–22. Hill, Michael (1998) ‘Life in the Bush: The Orchestration of Nature in Australian Animated Feature Films’, in Rebecca Coyle (ed.) Screen Scores: Studies in Contemporary Australian Film Music. Sydney: AFTRS. Isaza, Miguel (2011) ‘“The Lost Thing”, Exclusive Interview with Sound Designer John Kassab’. Available online: http://designingsound.org/2011/03/the-lost-thingexclusive-interview-with-sound-designer-john-kassab/#more-8980 [accessed February 2013]. Kassab, John (n.d.) ‘Commentary: The Sound of The Lost Thing’. Available online: http://www.ithentic.com/p/2011/09/13/lost-thing-oscar/ [accessed January 2013] Robb, Brian J. (2012) Steampunk: An Illustrated History of Fantastical Fiction, Fanciful Film and Other Victorian Visions. Minneapolis: Voyageur Press. Sullivan, Caroline (2008) ‘Tonight I’m going to party like it’s 1899’, Guardian October 17. Available online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/oct/17/popandrock2 [accessed May 2013]. Tan, Shaun (2010) ‘The Lost Thing: A Short Animated Film: OSCAR winner – best short animated film at the 83rd Academy Awards’. Available online: http://www. shauntan.net/film/lost-thing-film.html [accessed February 2013]. ‘The Lost Thing Voice Record Session with Tim Minchin’, video (2010). Available online: http://www.timminchin.com/2010/11/09/the-lost-thing/ [accessed March 2013]. Wilson, Ashleigh (2008) ‘Music completes the picture’, The Australian 14 July. Available online: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/music-completes-the-picture/storye6frg8n6-1111116814418 [accessed March 2013]. Zarate, Janus (2011) ‘Defining and Defying Genre: The Dilemma of Steampunk Music’ Tor.com. Available online: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/10/defining-and-defyinggenre-the-dilemma-of-steampunk-music [accessed May 2013].

10

Minor Cinema and Major Music in New Zealand: No. 2 and Don McGlashan Henry Johnson

University of Otago, New Zealand

Introduction The film industry in New Zealand has captured the attention of a global audience with the international success of films such as The Piano (Campion, 1993), The Last Samurai (Zwick, 2003), The Lord of the Rings trilogy (Jackson, 2001–3),1 and the first of three films, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Jackson, 2012). While these films and others have had a strong New Zealand presence, especially in terms of location and crew, cinema in New Zealand includes many other locally made films that help portray identity through various spheres of this type of contemporary media. This chapter studies some of the ways that the film music of Don McGlashan2 (b. 1959) as featured in the film, No. 2 (Fraser, 2006), reflects broader national characteristics of the New Zealand film industry. Focus is given to the notion of minor cinema (Deleuze, 1989) and the central point of the discussion is on the major music components of No. 2. Perceptions of local and national identity can be represented in film in various ways, including a contribution to a film’s production, setting, cultural emblems and music. However, with No. 2, identity representation takes a deeper level of meaning in both the subject matter of the film and the way music is used to challenge stereotypical images of New Zealand that have often been the focus of cinematic celebration. As a way of structuring a discussion around the film’s music, cultural representation and local characteristics of film making, the chapter divides into three main analytical parts. The first discusses music styles used in the film; the second focuses on deterritorializing and reterritorializing the subject matter of New Zealand film in terms of how the nation is

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represented; and the last part focuses on budget and location as distinct components that help imbue local film productions with traces of New Zealand identity. No. 2 was directed by Toa Fraser (b. 1975), who adapted the storyline from his second stage play of the same name, first performed in 1999 with nine characters played by Madeleine Sami as a one-woman act (IMDb, 2014a; NZ On Screen, 2014b). As a playwright, Fraser achieved international success with No. 2 with several awards and accolades, including a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2000. Fraser was born in the UK to a Fijian father and a British mother. He moved to New Zealand with his family in 1989 and was educated at Auckland University where he began acting and playwriting (NZ On Screen, 2014b). The setting for No. 2 is a Fijian household in Mt Roskill, a suburb of Auckland about 7 km to the south of city centre. The plot is based around holding a party for Nana Maria (nana meaning ‘grandmother’), who is played by Afro-American actress Ruby Dee, the matriarch of the extended Fijian family, and her quest for finding a successor (Petrie, 2007). As the storyline unfolds over a single day, the film centres on preparations by Nana Maria’s family for the feast to name her successor. With these preparations, the family is portrayed in terms of obligations, tensions and ethnicity, with the dominant position of Nana Maria taking centre stage throughout. As a performer and composer, Don McGlashan has contributed to crafting New Zealand musical identity in several contexts of cultural production. He writes and performs in a range of styles, including classical and popular music, and he has scored a number of critically acclaimed New Zealand films (McGlashan, 2014). This chapter discusses one of McGlashan’s film scores as a case study with the aim of interpreting how this New Zealand musician has contributed to not only the production of sound on screen, but also how this visual and sonic media context of cultural symbols represents New Zealand in distinct ways. The soundtrack reflects a small part of the national context, and shows social and cultural forms of representation produced through different levels of negotiation at different stages of production. Many New Zealand films attempt to represent New Zealand’s past authentically (Straker, 2013: 55–6), and national cinema in the New Zealand context often emphasizes self-representation of perceived national characteristics. For example, in the film Scarfies (Sarkies, 1999), the city of Dunedin in the South Island, with its iconic student culture, was represented in accompanying music as a series of tracks from the Flying Nun record label (Williams, 2008), which is a sound that emerged in the early 1980s and characterized the city’s youth



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culture at that time. In this context, music acts as a powerful signifier of place and nostalgia, just as history and memory are powerful underlying tropes in the film industry more broadly (Cook, 2005; Guynn, 2006). As Straker comments, ‘a significant number of films have focused on representing New Zealand’s past in what appears to be a nation’s attempt to portray, to local and international audiences, the country’s continual cultural growth’ (Straker, 2013: 56). With image, there are many obvious ways of representing a location, whether through the appearance of well-known locations such as landmarks or landscapes, or significant buildings or people. Each helps ‘signify its “New Zealandness” […] and represents local identity to audiences’ (Straker, 2013: 57; see also Conrich, 2008; Davy and Pivac, 2008; Moran and Vieth, 2005: 290). Moreover, ‘an audience’s recognition that a film is set in the past is notable in the visual and aural signifiers, such as costume, setting and sound’ (Straker, 2013: 57; cf. Hughes-Warrington, 2007: 38). But when working with music for film, several questions are raised about what the music represents: How can music represent place? How can diegetic and non-diegetic music support what appears on screen? Is the identity of film music composers and musicians represented through sound and image? Such questions help underpin the analytic study of film scores, and this chapter explores the music of No. 2 in these ways. New Zealand cinema has produced a number of notable films that have captured the national imagination since 1913 (Martin and Edwards, 1997; Sigley, 2003; Straker, 2013). Many of these films were of national interest in terms of their subject matter, which often included Māori themes, the history of New Zealand, and local settings, stories and cast (Martin and Edwards, 1997). More recently, and especially with the commercial success of films produced by Sir Peter Jackson over the past few decades,3 New Zealand’s film industry has achieved notable success internationally (Martin and Edwards, 1997). Wellington has emerged as a centre for film production, informally called ‘Wellywood’ as a play on the words ‘Wellington’ and ‘Hollywood’, with New Zealand’s landscapes often appearing as a backdrop to a film. Such is the relative infancy of the New Zealand film industry on the global stage that 90 per cent of New Zealand films have been produced over the past thirty-five years (Straker, 2013: 55). The New Zealand Film Commission was established in 1978 in order to help the local film industry and to foster its representations of New Zealand (Waller, 2008), which resulted in a substantial increase in the number of films made there, and the New Zealand Film Archive was established in 1981. The extent of the New Zealand Film Commission’s influence on the production

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of films in New Zealand is evident in Item 18 (‘Content of Films’) of the New Zealand Film Commission Act (1978), which was legislation that helped offer a top-down model for national film making. The first three points of the Act help show the importance given to representing New Zealand when supporting a film’s production with financial assistance: (1)  In carrying out its functions, the Commission shall not make financial assistance available to any person in respect of the making, promotion, distribution, or exhibition of a film unless it is satisfied that the film has or is to have a significant New Zealand content. (2) For the purposes of determining whether or not a film has or is to have a significant New Zealand content, the Commission shall have regard to the following matters: (a) the subject of the film (b) the locations at which the film was or is to be made (c) the nationalities and places of residence of— (i) the authors, scriptwriters, composers, producers, directors, actors, technicians, editors, and other persons who took part or are to take part in the making of the film; and (ii) the persons who own or are to own the shares or capital of any company, partnership, or joint venture that is concerned with the making of the film; and (iii)  the persons who have or are to have the copyright in the film. (New Zealand Government, 1978.)

In order to complete its production, No. 2 received funding from the New Zealand Film Commission, Working Title Films, Miramax Films and NZ on Air. New Zealand film has been studied in a range of academic publications, and the notions of national identity and cultural nationalism have been topics that have often been foregrounded (e.g. Conrich and Murray, 2008; Martin and Edwards, 1997; Reynolds, 2002). In order to show how No. 2 is both a product of New Zealand and a representation of a part of its cultural setting, the theoretical orientation of this chapter draws on the notion of ‘minor cinema’ as offered by Deleuze (1989; see also Deleuze, 1986; Deleuze and Guattari, 1987; Genosko, 2009; Gunning, 1991; Verevis, 2010: 168–70; cf. Martin-Jones, 2011). This approach refers to a small-scale, low budget type of film production that on the one hand aims for excellence in the national market (cf. Martin-Jones, 2006), while at the same time is not produced solely with the intention of reaching a mass audience internationally. The focus of No. 2 as minor cinema also offers a way of challenging stereotypes about New Zealand film as often portrayed



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through cinematic tropes such as landscape and New Zealand’s unique bicultural milieu. For No. 2, while the film is distinctly New Zealand based and typical of much New Zealand cinema in many ways, especially as a result of its low budget and locality, it extends the genre of New Zealand feature film into the twenty-first century as a reflection of the country’s changing ethnoscape (Appadurai, 1996), and consequently portrays and critiques one local setting that is a reflection of aspects of the director’s personal life journey. In this context, the film is not a portrayal of colonial screen, but a ‘fabulation’ (Deleuze, 1989; see Bogue, 2010), or storytelling, in terms of its portrayal of a small part of the nation. Moreover, the ‘minor cinema’ aspect in this context is a part of New Zealand’s identity; it is where people are from, where they are and what they become (cf. Hall, 1990). McGlashan studied music at Auckland University, where he specialized in percussion and French horn. While he learned only a small amount of composition and orchestration as a university student, he became interested in film music and gradually gained professional work in the field. He was never trained in how to compose for TV and film, and learned the craft through experience as a novice in the industry. McGlashan has achieved notable success in popular music and composition. He has led the well-known bands Blam Blam Blam and The Mutton Birds, and has produced many soundtracks for film and TV (Bannister, 2006; McGlashan, 2014; NZ On Screen, 2005). As with most pre-1990s’ New Zealand film music composers who undertook compositional training at New Zealand universities, there was no formal training in writing music for film. Indeed, Victoria Kelly (b. 1973) may be the only New Zealand film composer to have a postgraduate qualification in film music composition, which she gained in the US. In this discussion, what is particularly important to note is that in New Zealand most ‘composers for film scores learned by doing, drawing on their experience in concert or popular music and working under great pressure’ (Ferreira, 2010: 80). Ferreira (2012: 25–67) discusses the unique characteristics in New Zealand for composing for film, and compares standard practice in Hollywood with that of New Zealand. Music plays a pivotal role in No. 2 in many ways, especially with various diegetic and non-diegetic scenes. McGlashan was involved in the planning of the film from the very start and helped influence how the characters and their personalities would be formed (Ferreira, 2012: 107): Toa came to my place with a pile of musical references:  an old Neapolitan song performed by Pavarotti, some Che Fu, the Intermezzo from Cavalleria

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Rusticana by Mascagni, and a tape of a Fijian pop song that sounded like it had been used to lash a canoe together, before being rewound back into its cassette case. (McGlashan, in Langabeer, 2005)

Indeed, ‘there were two reasons for this early involvement in No. 2, namely the need for a diegetic song; and music that would be in place to support the development of characters before the scenes were shot’ (Ferreira, 2012: 107). As such, No. 2 used mixed musical devices, including existing and well-known songs and music, and newly written songs and music (Ferreira, 2012: 105–8). For the newly composed pieces, the composer assembled a small group of musicians to perform the soundtrack. The musicians employed on the soundtrack are Miranda Adams (violin), William Hanfling (violin), Robert Ashworth (viola), Claudia Price (cello), Martin Lee (oboe), Joanna Schultz (French horn), Yvette Audain (clarinet), Andrew Uren (bassoon), Rebecca Harris (harp), Don McGlashan (guitar, euphonium) and John Segovia (lap steel guitar). The choice of musicians had much to do with local knowledge and prior musical collaborations. For the song ‘Bathe in the River’, the musicians were Hollie Smith and The Mt. Raskil Preservation Society, the latter being a one-off project by McGlashan specifically for this song (NZ On Screen, 2014a): Hollie Smith (lead vocal), Bella Kalolo (backing vocal), David Long (guitar), Sean Donnelly (bass), Willy Scott (drums), Stephen Small (piano), Jason Smith (organ), Toby Laing, Steve Roche and Don McGlashan (horns), and Jubilation (a cappella gospel choir) (NZ On Screen, 2014a). As discussed later, an understanding of McGlashan’s choice of performers helps show some of the key traits of producing the soundtrack. Each of the musicians was already based in New Zealand, mostly in Auckland, and their location contributed to the nature of the soundtrack. The music for the film won several awards, including best original music from the New Zealand Film and TV Awards in 2006, and the theme song, ‘Bathe in the River’, was best song at the APRA4 Silver Scroll awards in 2006 (Ferreira, 2012: 105). This song achieved notable success in New Zealand in 2006, and McGlashan even released his own version of the song in 2009 on his album Marvellous Year (2009).

Music styles No. 2 includes an eclectic mix of music styles. It also uses various strategies for including music, featuring diegetic and non-diegetic scenes, with the former



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often given prominence as a key strategy in the film’s production. The film’s music can be grouped into five main styles, as shown in Table 2. Table 2  Main music styles in No. 2. Style

Features

Artists

Classical music

Minimalistic; strings; Shaun Dixon (tenor voice), Miranda Adams wind; Neapolitan (violin), William Hanfling (violin), song Robert Ashworth (viola), Claudia Price (cello), Martin Lee (oboe), Joanna Schultz (French horn), Yvette Audain (clarinet), Andrew Uren (bassoon), Rebecca Harris (harp), Don McGlashan (euphonium). Fijian Traditional (i.e. meke Senirewa Nawanawa, Don McGlashan, John Segovia; Fijian Festival Performers; Pio [a dance style]); popular song and Terei, Nat Lees, Rene Naufautu and cast. arrangements Lap steel Hawaiian sound Don McGlashan (guitar); John Segovia (lap guitar steel guitar). Pacific/ Calypso Mila with Eddie Lund and his Tahitians; Pio Caribbean Terei, Nat Lees, Rene Naufautu and cast. Popular New Zealand hip The Mt. Raskil Preservation Society; Tha music hop, soul and Feelstyle; Fou Nature; King Kapisi; Che reggae Fu; Trinity Roots.

In a discussion of the music included in No. 2, Ferreira notes the following regarding the eclecticism of musical styles: Orchestral strings for a sense of occasion (Nana arriving at the party), hip-hop (e.g. Che Fu, who is a New Zealand Hip-hop/R&B and Reggae musician and Tha Feelstyle, who mainly raps in Samoan), Hawaiian-like guitar (Pacific element), and Fijian folksongs. The final song is ‘Home, Land and Sea’ by Trinity Roots, a much-loved New Zealand band whose style is a mixture of reggae, jazz and soul. (2012: 108; cf. Mackay, 1985)

As well as using McGlashan’s original music composed especially for the film – which is mostly scored in a minimalistic classical music style – or for a Hawaiian-sounding lap steel guitar, No. 2 also includes a number of existing songs from Fiji, New Zealand and further afield (Bryant, 2006; Ferreira, 2012: 105). Transitions are often filled by the sounds of classical music or lap steel guitar, and pre-existing pop songs are mainly used as very short extracts and associated with specific characters and settings. For example, the Fijian popular and traditional music conjures up images of Fiji and the family’s nostalgia

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for ‘home’ while living in Auckland. The song serves ‘as an affirmation of the family’s cultural roots, [and] it also unites the musical score by way of repetition’ (Ferreira, 2012: 106). A contrasting style of music is rap music, which is used to characterize and offer stereotypical images for some scenes. As McGlashan comments, in connection with rap music he ‘wanted some music for the young guys when they drive their cars around, particularly Sol, whose car has its own personality; it’s practically a character in the film’ (in Bryant, 2006). In addition to this array of short extracts and contrasting cultural associations that are offered with the music and film, No. 2 also features three ‘big songs’, which are heard in their entirety. One of these, ‘Bathe in the River’ (4´29˝), was written by McGlashan and achieved much commercial success in 2006 when it was released as a separate single. It is a gospel-sounding song that is used to accompany one of the party scenes. The music offers a type of diegetic moment where the viewer assumes the guests are dancing to the song. Another one of the ‘big songs’ is ‘Home, Land and Sea’ (5´23˝), which is performed by the band Trinity Roots. The song closes the film and its lyrics help emphasize the New Zealand film music setting, particularly with its ‘home’, ‘land’ and ‘sea’ references, which often feature in New Zealand songs about the nation as place (Mitchell 2009, 2010). The other main song featured is ‘Core ’ngrato’ (3´10˝ and 2´16˝; heard in two parts with a short scene in between), which is a 1911 Neapolitan song by emigrant Italian American composer Salvatore Cardillo (1874–1947) with lyrics by Riccardo Cordiferro (1875–1949, born Alessandro Sisca) (Rotella, 2010). This song accompanies an emotional scene featuring Nana Maria when she is lying in bed and crying. A map of Sicily on the wall adds a further level of visual representation. Classical music has a prominent role in No. 2. While the soundtrack is dominated by short extracts of pre-existing popular music, short passages of original classical music are often found during transitions between many of the scenes and also extending into some scenes. These extracts are played mostly by a small ensemble of players (see above), and the musical style is minimalist. Classical music is also heard during the last part of the closing credits. The film also includes original short guitar (lap steel guitar) extracts between and during some of the scenes. The guitar and classical extracts offer contrasting sounds, with the former continuing a more popular music style as found in the pre-exiting extracts, and the latter providing sonic inference to Nana Maria’s remarks on opera in Italy at several moments in the dialogue.



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Classical music is a major genre of film music. Classical music may have distinct European roots, but, as articles in this volume show, it is also a style of art music that has been widely disseminated around the globe and produced in many local contexts. In New Zealand, European art music was introduced during the colonial period. The genre was transplanted in terms of a style of music, with musicians, instruments and a body of work that continued in its colonial setting. Over the decades, composers in New Zealand, whether migrants or descendants of migrants, have sometimes localized this style of music with musical and symbolic traits that discern to some extent a distinct New Zealand version. The nation’s natural environment is one such example, particularly concerning landscape. For example, in this context, Keam explores ‘claims that the particular environmental conditions of the land have imprinted themselves onto the nation’s music’ (Keam, 2006: i). Such localization can be linked with New Zealand identity in national terms, at least when distinguishing some elements that are viewed as unique to the local context. McGlashan’s use of classical music links to other key factors for him, New Zealand and film music production more broadly. Some of his other film soundtracks also make much use of classical music, whether already existing or pastiche works of his own, just as with numerous other films in the wider film music industry. For example, the music for Dean Spanley (dir: Fraser, 2008) is mostly classical and orchestral, and McGlashan describes working on this film as his best experience to date because he was able to work with a full orchestra, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Also, classical music was a major feature of Bliss (dir: Samuel, 2011), and when making the soundtrack for this film, McGlashan worked closely with the New Zealand Trio. Some of the diegetic moments in No. 2 are particularly noticeable. For example, one scene depicts Nana Maria singing in the garden, and this scene blends seamlessly with the inclusion of non-diegetic backing guitar while she continues to sing. A similar garden scene occurs later in the film when another female character is asked to sing, and is soon followed by a man joining in on guitar, but this time the guitar can be seen. This scene also offers a moment in the film when the characters can actually applaud a singer, which offers a performance where an actor is also performer, and other actors are the audience. Much use is made of the playing of music on a cassette player, which offers diegetic sound, as this is music being played inside vehicles.

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De/reterritorializing New Zealand No. 2 offers a glimpse of New Zealand’s multicultural milieu through a Fijian lens, and contributes to both deterritorializing and reterritorializing ideas of New Zealand film as national representation, especially when such images offer ‘an imagined political unity’ (Anderson, 1983: 6). The film is centred on a Fijian family living in a multicultural suburb of Auckland, which is the world’s largest Polynesian city, and also includes other aspects of the country’s rapidly changing ethnoscape (Appadurai, 1996). The film’s Fijian essence also extends to the director, Toa Fraser, whose father was born in Fiji: ‘I was born in England. So was my mother. My father was born on the opposite side of the world, in a mining town in Fiji. These things are important to me. They have impact on the way I tell stories. It is a legacy I am always working with and fighting with’ (Fraser, 2014). Fraser knew about the location before he moved there. It was a city that his father spoke about and painted a certain image that stuck in his mind: ‘When I was a kid growing up in England, Auckland was painted in myth. My dad – Eugene, born in Fiji, raised in Auckland – told us stories that made it a scary, romantic place’ (Fraser, 2014). The film’s location, Mt. Roskill, is an excellent example of the diverse mix of cultures that currently represent Auckland and more broadly New Zealand (Table 2): About 40% of the usually resident population of Mt Roskill are from the Asian ethnic group – the highest percentage of any general electorate in 2006, and over four times the national average (9.2%). Less than half (46.1%) of the people in the electorate in 2006 were born in New Zealand – the lowest share of any general electorate. The proportions of those affiliated with the Hindu religion (11.9%), and those affiliated with Islam (6.7%), were the highest in New Zealand (Parliamentary Library, 2012: 3).

The Fijian population of New Zealand is itself immensely diverse and multicultural, as are the other categories listed in Table 2. Fijians represent about 4 per cent of the population, and are the fifth largest Pacific Island culture in New Zealand (Statistics New Zealand, 2014). ‘Fifty-nine per cent (5,847) of Fijians live in the Auckland urban area. Of this total, 31 per cent (1,788) and 34 per cent (1,950) live in the South Auckland and Central Auckland urban areas, respectively’ (Statistics New Zealand, 2007: 10).



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Table 3  Cultural diversity in Mt. Roskill and New Zealand Ethnicity

Mt Roskill Number of People %

New Zealand %

European Māori Pacific Peoples Asian Middle Eastern/Latin American/African Other (incl. New Zealander) Total Specified Not Elsewhere Indicated

22,521 3,345 8,445 23,376 1,599 3,120 57,963 3,252

67.6 14.6 6.9 9.2 0.9 11.2 100.0 4.3

38.9 5.8 14.6 40.3 2.8 5.4 100.0 5.6

Source: Adapted from Parliamentary Library (2012: 3).

In No. 2, Fiji as a place is represented by the use of popular and traditional Fijian music. There are also some pan-Pacific tracks, as well as contemporary music made in New Zealand by performers of Pacific heritage. A closer look at one of the film’s main songs, ‘Bathe in the River’, helps show some of the cultural dynamics of the production. The song’s lead singer Hollie Smith has had a successful career in New Zealand and is the recipient of many awards. She describes herself as a ‘diminutive Pakeha’ (Pākehā: European New Zealander) and having a voice like ‘a big black mama from a Southern Baptist choir’ (Smith, 2014). This way of self-identifying helps locate Smith in a complex web of national and transnational cultural flows that reflect New Zealand’s contemporary ethnoscape. She has a soul voice analogous to that of a black gospel singer in the US, yet she identifies as Pākehā. The bicultural milieu of New Zealand helps Smith identify with non-Māori, yet she is also able to relate the style of her singing across cultures and ethnicities by associating her vocal style with black gospel music. Backing vocalist on the song, Bella Kalolo, who has received major accolades both at home and abroad, also identifies with soul music, although she notes herself as a ‘Samoan, Tongan and Maori (Ngati Porou) soul sister’ (Kalolo, 2014). These wider Polynesian roots underpin her transcultural vocal style. The other (male) members of the one-off band that performed the song have other local connections. For example, David Long was a former guitarist in the band The Mutton Birds, along with McGlashan. He is also a film music composer and music producer, and had already jointly composed film music with McGlashan (e.g. Absent Without Leave; Laing, 1992). The backing choir for the song was Jubilation, a cappella gospel choir from Auckland that sings in an African-American gospel style.

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A further level of cultural representation appears in the film in connection with a young Chinese couple, where racism is mentioned. The Chinese couple are involved in an accident and the female driver and male passenger are clearly angered by the incident. At one point the male passenger calls out ‘racist’ during an argument. Such a scene adds a further level of multiculturalism to the film, along with the Pākehā dynamics of outsiders connected to the Fijian family, which is a subject encountered in several scenes. The soundtrack builds on the notion of cultural diversity. Classical music has clear European roots, but since the days of colonialism this type of music was transplanted to many new locations around the world. New Zealand popular music adds a contrasting sonic flavour to the mix, and there are further diverse sounds on the soundtrack, including artists with distinct Pacific roots performing in transcultural styles. A further element included as important music in the soundtrack is the use of traditional Fijian music, which often accompanies scenes featuring Nana Maria. The flows of music and cultures point to one of the underpinning themes of the film. As noted by Fraser: No.2’s all about journeys. The journey from Scotland and Samoa to Levuka to Mt. Roskill. The journey from Roseman Ave. to Dominion Rd. shops to St. Therese Catholic Church. From Harlem and London and Copenhagen and Sydney to Mt. Roskill. The journey from Suva, where I began writing the screenplay, to Wellington, where we’re finishing post-production. (Fraser, in New Zealand Film Commission, 2005: 7)

As an example of minor cinema, No 2 anticipates ‘a consciousness to be brought into existence’ (Verevis, 2010: 168) in terms of New Zealand’s engagement with multiculturalism within its bicultural political milieu (i.e. Māori and Pākehā). New Zealand cinema has often presented national identity through film in terms of the dichotomy between the indigenous people of the land and its colonial settlers. However, with No. 2, there is a mix of cultures presented: Fijian (migrants), European and Chinese. It is here that the film ‘crosses borders, merging the personal with the social to make it immediately political … [creating] a multiplicity of conditions’ (Verevis, 2010: 168).

Budget and location In comparison to some global blockbuster films that have massive budgets, No. 2 was produced with a relatively low budget (Ferreira, 2012: 108). For example, the



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estimated budget was NZD 10 million, while that of The Lord of the Rings was USD 93 million (IMDb, 2014a; 2014b). Such financial constraints meant that the film could not match some of the technical, creative, casting or production aspects of most Hollywood films, but in the New Zealand context, such limitations actually contributed to the success of the film as one of many New Zealand films made in similar circumstances. By operating with a relatively small budget it also helps to show how local cinema is able to use the media of internationally dominant cinema, ‘but makes it speak in a minor way’ (Martin-Jones, 2006: 36). As part of the production process, the limited budget meant that the entire cast and crew interacted in ways distinct to the national and local contexts, and were able to make a film that is a reflection of many similar size films in New Zealand and Auckland. With No. 2, much about the interconnection between music and film was the result of the film’s low budget, and as such helps define grassroots New Zealand film and New Zealand film music. Because of working with small budgets, filmmakers in New Zealand have necessarily become versatile in acquiring diverse knowledge about many aspects of film production that might not ordinarily be learned in some other national contexts. In New Zealand, almost everyone who is involved in film at every level is an aspiring filmmaker (McGlashan, interview). For example, McGlashan has been involved not only in composing for film, but also writing, acting and directing. This is especially evident in his collaboration with Harry Sinclair and their ‘The Front Lawn’ project, which not only released music, but also made three short films: Walkshort (dir: Toepfer, 1987); The Lounge Bar (dir: McGlashan and Sinclair, 1989); and Linda’s Body (dir: Sinclair, 1990). In connection with the music in No. 2, the initial idea was to have music associated with every main character. Also, McGlashan knew the film needed a big gospel-sounding song, but the production was constrained by budget. As he notes, there was ‘a sort of a number eight wire type thing’ (interview). What McGlashan meant by this was that there was a very tight budget for making the film and that he and the rest of the crew had to make do with what was available, which would inevitably mean thinking innovatively and effectively. Because Fraser had originally had the idea of including a number of pre-existing songs in the film, the low budget had an impact on what tracks McGlashan could incorporate in terms of licencing fees: McGlashan describes No. 2 as ‘a really musical film’, but this attribute came at a price – effort, rather than money. As is often the case in the New Zealand industry, the budget did not allow any extravagance. For instance, Nana Maria

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is more or less resigning herself to the idea that the children might not give her what she wants and she orders her granddaughter to ‘put on the opera tape’. The copyright fee for the proposed piece was too expensive and McGlashan found an earlier piece (‘Core ngrato’) and arranged it for a small eight-piece ensemble with a local tenor, Shaun Dixon, as soloist. In the sound edit they used over-dubs to make the small ensemble sound like a full orchestra. (Ferreira, 2012: 108)

This reference to opera, or rather Neapolitan song written in the early twentieth century by Italian migrants to the US, offers insight into the process of choosing appropriate music for the soundtrack. For this specific scene, rather than paying what was considered an excessive fee for a certain piece of music, McGlashan had to make his own arrangement of another piece. New Zealand has a population of 4.5 million and Auckland is the country’s largest city, which has a population of about 1.4 million (Statistics New Zealand, 2014). As a relatively small country, film production is also determined by location, especially through social relationships. For example, McGlashan has worked mainly with New Zealand film directors, and he even mentions that he has experienced gaining work in film music by producers literally coming up to him on the street (NZ On Screen, 2009). Similarly, most of the musicians playing on the soundtrack to No. 2 were based in Auckland, and the classical musicians were already playing for the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra. In addition, McGlashan was based in Auckland (he had also collaborated with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra on earlier occasions), as was John Segovia who played lap steel guitar during many scene transitions and on some of the arrangements of other songs. When producing the music, McGlashan also used local knowledge and his ‘number eight wire’ approach for some of the songs. As he notes, for the Fijian pop song, ‘Sai Levuka Ga’, ‘we just rang up the Fijian Information Bureau and talked to the receptionist, and asked her “Can you sing?” “Well I can actually, but I know someone who can sing better than me.” So the first lady I called came along, and the second lady that came in, Senirewa Nawanawa, she had the voice for the solo. We recorded that song in its entirety’ (McGlashan, in, 2006). No. 2 has many aspects in it that relate its music to the notion of place. The idea of place is of special concern in terms of the way that the soundtrack relates to New Zealand, and includes references to Fiji, the Pacific, New Zealand and Europe, each of which can also refer to their diaspora cultures and to New Zealand more broadly. In connection with music and place, as Stokes



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comments, ‘the musical event, from collective dances to the act of putting a cassette or CD into a machine, evokes and organizes collective memories and present experiences of place with an intensity, power and simplicity unmatched by any other social activity’ (Stokes, 1994: 3). When asked about making his music sound ‘New Zealand’, McGlashan responds, ‘My take on it is that anything done by New Zealanders is going to have a national flavour. … Dean Spanley was … a New Zealand film even though … it didn’t have Mount Cook in it and nobody spoke Māori at any point’ (interview). But he also notes that there are some aspects of films and music that take on national characteristics, including the environment, landscape, speech rhythms, mind sets, sense of humour, minimalism and not working from formulae. There are several ways that music reflects a local context, including instruments and style. Music might also have local content because of the people composing or performing the music. Mitchell (2009) looks through a sonic psycho-geographic lens at McGlashan’s songs in connection with the notion of place, and in this context local identity in New Zealand (see also Bannister, 2002, 2006; Braae, 2012; Brabazon, 1996; and Madill, 2012 on New Zealand more broadly). Mitchell focuses on themes of ethnicity and location, and discusses Māori and Pākehā cultural identities, and urban centres: Both the North and South Islands of Aotearoa have generated numerous examples of landscape-influenced music, both classical and popular, which expresses diverse psycho-geographic perspectives and poetics of place and musical form that are arguably unique to this terrain, but also connect strongly and in idiosyncratic ways to more global idioms and forms which counterpoint a sense of isolation and remoteness. (Mitchell, 2009: 172)

McGlashan’s music makes much of the places in his life. While talking about the many influences of global popular music on New Zealand consumers, McGlashan notes that such music often references other locations, and that much of his music makes distinct references to places in New Zealand, such as his song ‘Dominion Road’ (NZ On Screen, 2005). With reference to the music for No. 2, McGlashan notes the importance of reflecting the scene through sound, rather than placing sound to screen: ‘the first desire is […] to serve … the internal needs of the scene … I knew there was … some kind of landscape stuff, that there … was a big very beautiful throw from the top of … Mt Roskill … we ended up with a quartet … that we just triple tracked, and about three wind players, which is all we could afford’ (interview).

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Conclusion This chapter has revealed much about New Zealand film production in the twenty-first century. Focus has been given to the notion of No. 2 as an example of minor cinema in terms of the influences on its local production, and the Fijian diaspora culture portrayed in the storyline. With this case study, the concept of minor is revealed as a major part of the film, and in particular the role that music plays in terms of both its function and how it signifies local meaning. No. 2 has music at its core. It is a musical film. It juxtaposes and blends diegetic and non-diegetic scenes to create a montage of musical sonorities that help drive the film forward and give musical association to many of its characters and scenes. McGlashan uses distinctly contrasting styles of music, which are primarily classical, popular and traditional, and juxtaposes a series of short sounds as well as including three ‘big songs’. The classical and popular music includes newly composed minimalistic sounds, as well as pre-existing pieces, and traditional music mixes Fijian sounds with pan-Pacific and other global sonorities. The notion of multiculturalism underpins the film’s storyline. Most of the characters are of Fijian descent, and when they are not (i.e. European or Chinese), the film makes much of these ethnicities and identities. Moreover, these New Zealand identities are represented more broadly through not only these types of music, but also through the use of pre-existing contemporary popular music and the global flow of music. No. 2 is a microcosm of minor cinema in New Zealand. It reflects the nation in terms of its low budget and location. Making films in New Zealand, and without the help of major international production companies, has meant that most filmmakers rely on the multi-talented skills of locally available crew, as well as top-down funding. As a case study of minor cinema in New Zealand, No. 2 is a reflection of part of the national ethnoscape. The film and its soundtrack are not minor in the literal sense of the word, but are part of a process of becoming where the film represents a national imaginary. Music, multiculturalism and local production traits combine to produce a film that stands for New Zealand cinema in the present era. It is an example of minor cinema with a major musical component, and, therefore, problematizes the notion of national identity in multifarious ways.



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Notes 1 The three films were The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002) and The Return of the King (2003). 2 Much information about McGlashan and his film music works was gained during an interview by the author with the musician in 2011, and also during follow-up correspondence. 3 He was knighted in 2010 for services to film. 4 APRA (Australasian Performing Right Association). The song was in the New Zealand charts for twenty-two weeks.

References Anderson, Benedict (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Appadurai, Arjun (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bannister, Matthew (2002) ‘White Man’s Soul: Pakeha Masculinities in Popular Music of New Zealand/Aotearoa’. PhD diss., Auckland: University of Auckland. Bannister, Matthew (2006) ‘A Thing Well Made? NZ Settler Identity and Pakeha Masculinity in the Work of Don McGlashan’. Perfect Beat 8 (1): 22–49. Bogue, Ronald (2010) ‘Fabulation’, in Adrian Parr (ed.) The Deleuze Dictionary, rev. edn. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press: 99–100. Braae, Nicholas (2012) ‘A Musicological Analysis of Nature’s Best’. MA diss., Hamilton, NZ: The University of Waikato. Brabazon, Tara (1996) ‘“It started on Queen Street”: New Zealand Popular Music, Cultural Identity and the Question of Landscape’. Continuum 10 (1): 152–67. Bryant, Rick (2006) ‘Creating No. 2’s First Class Soundtrack: Don McGlashan Talks to Fellow Musician Rick Bryant about his Work as Composer on Toa Fraser’s Feature Film Debut’. Onfilm 23 (5): 24. Campion, Jane (Director) (1993) [Film] The Piano. Jan Chapman Productions. Conrich, Ian (2008) ‘The Space Between: Screen Representations of the New Zealand Small Town’, in Ian Conrich and Stuart Murray (eds) Contemporary New Zealand Cinema: From New Wave to Blockbuster. London: I. B. Tauris: 103–17. Conrich, Ian and Stuart Murray (eds) (2008) Contemporary New Zealand Cinema: From New Wave to Blockbuster. London: I. B. Tauris. Cook, Pam (2005) Screening the Past: Memory and Nostalgia in Cinema. New York: Routledge.

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Davy, Sarah and Diane Pivac (2008) ‘“With a Strong Sense of Place”: The New Zealand Film Archive/​Nga Kaitiaki O Nga Taonga Whitiahua’, in Ian Conrich and Stuart Murray (eds) Contemporary New Zealand Cinema: From New Wave to Blockbuster. London: I. B. Tauris: 85–99. Deleuze, Gilles (1986) Cinema 1: The Movement-image, Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (trans.). London: The Athlone Press. Deleuze, Gilles (1989) Cinema 2: The Time-image, Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta (trans.). London: The Athlone Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari (1987) A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi. London: The Athlone Press. Ferreira, Riette (2010) ‘Music for The Silent One: An Interview with Composer Jenny McLeod’. Screen Sound 1: 79–91. Ferreira, Riette (2012) ‘New Zealand Film Music in Focus: Music by New Zealand Composers for Feature Films’. PhD diss., Auckland, NZ: The University of Auckland. Fraser, Toa (Director) (2006) [Film] No. 2. Numero Films. Fraser, Toa (Director) (2008) [Film] Dean Spanley. Matthew Metcalfe/Atlantic Film Group. Fraser, Toa (2014) Available online: http://toafraser.com [accessed 26 March 2014]. Genosko, Gary (2009) Félix Guattari: A Critical Introduction. London: Pluto Books. Gunning, Tom (1991) ‘Towards a Minor Cinema: Fonoroff, Herwitz, Ahwesh, Lapore, Klahr and Solomon’. Motion Picture 4: 2–5. Guynn, William (2006) Writing History in Film. New York: Routledge. Hall, Stuart (1990) ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, in Jonathan Rutherford (ed.) Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. London: Lawrence and Wishart: 222–37. Hughes-Warrington, Marnie (2007) History goes to the Movies: Studying History on Film. New York: Routledge. IMDb (2014a) No. 2. Available online: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0452345/ fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm [accessed 29 March 2014]. IMDb (2014b) The Lord of the Rings. Available online: http://www.imdb.com/title/ tt0120737/business?ref_=tt_dt_bus [accessed 30 March 2014]. Jackson, Peter (Director) (2001–3) [Film] The Lord of the Rings. New Line Cinema. Jackson, Peter (Director) (2012) [Film] The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. New Line Cinema. Kalolo, Bella (2014) About. Available online: http://www.bellakalolo.com/about [accessed 23 March 2014]. Keam, Glenda (2006) ‘Exploring Notions of National Style: New Zealand Orchestral Music in the Late Twentieth Century’. PhD diss., Auckland, NZ: University of Auckland. Laing, Robin (Director) (1992) [Film] Absent Without Leave. Meridian Film Productions and the New Zealand Film Commission in association with Avalon/ NFU Studios and NZ On Air.



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Langabeer, Catherine (2005) ‘Don McGlashan and No. 2’. APRAP (December): 13. Mackay, Yvonne (Director) (1985) [Film] The Silent One. The Gibson Group. Madill, Bernard (2012) ‘Soundscaping New Zealand: An Aural Perspective of a Cinematic Geography’. MA diss., Dunedin, NZ: University of Otago. Martin, Helen and Edwards, Sam (1997) New Zealand Film: 1912–1996. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Martin-Jones, David (2006) Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity: Narrative Time in National Contexts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Martin-Jones, David (2011) Deleuze and World Cinemas. New York: Continuum. McGlashan, Don and Harry Sinclair (1989) [Film] The Lounge Bar. Front Lawn. McGlashan, Don and the Seven Sisters (2009) Marvellous Year. Auckland, NZ: Arch Hill Recordings. McGlashan, Don (2014) Available online: http://www.donmcglashan.com/index.php [accessed 29 March 2014]. Mitchell, Tony (2009) ‘Sonic Psychogeography: A Poetics of Place in Popular Music in Aotearoa/ New Zealand’. Perfect Beat 10 (2): 145–75. Mitchell, Tony (2010) ‘“Kiwi” Music and New Zealand National Identity’, in Henry Johnson (ed.) Many Voices. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 20–9. Moran, Albert and Errol Vieth (2005) Historical Dictionary of Australian and New Zealand Cinema. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. New Zealand Film Commission, The (2005) No.2: Press Book. Wellington: The New Zealand Film Commission. New Zealand Government (1978) New Zealand Film Commission Act (1978). Available online: http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1978/0061/latest/ DLM23018.html [accessed 24 March 2014]. NZ On Screen (2005) ‘Making music – Don McGlashan’. Available online: http://www. nzonscreen.com/title/making-music-don-mcglashan-2005 [accessed 22 March 2014]. NZ On Screen (2009) ‘Don McGlashan talks music’. Available online: http://screentalk. nzonscreen.com/interviews/don-mcglashan-talks-music [accessed 22 March 2014]. NZ On Screen (2014a) ‘Mt Raskil Preservation Society’. Available online: http://www. nzonscreen.com/title/mt-raskil-preservation-society/artist [accessed 23 March 2014]. NZ On Screen (2014b) ‘Toa Fraser’. Available online: http://www.nzonscreen.com/ person/toa-fraser/biography [accessed 26 March 2014]. Parliamentary Library (2012) Mt Roskill: Electorate profile. Wellington, NZ: Parliamentary Library. Petrie, Duncan (2007) Shot in New Zealand: The Art and Craft of the Kiwi Cinematographer. Auckland, NZ: Random House. Reynolds, John Stuart (2002) ‘Going Far? John O’Shea’s Runaway
in the Context of his Attempt to Establish a Feature Film Industry in New Zealand’. PhD diss., Auckland, NZ: University of Auckland.

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Rotella, Mark (2010) Amore: The Story of Italian American Song. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Samuel, Fiona (Director) (2011) [Film] Bliss. MF Films. Sarkies, Robert (Director) (1999) [Film] Scarfies. Nightmare Productions. Sigley, Simon (2003) ‘Film Culture: Its Development in New Zealand, 1929–1972’. PhD diss., Auckland, NZ: University of Auckland. Sinclair, Harry (Director) (1990) [Film] Linda’s Body. Front Lawn. Smith, Hollie (2014) ‘Bio’. Available online: http://www.holliesmith.co.nz/bio [accessed 23 March 2014]. Statistics New Zealand (2007) Fijian people in New Zealand: 2006. Wellington, NZ: Statistics New Zealand. Statistics New Zealand (2014) Available online: http://www.stats.govt.nz [accessed 29 March 2014]. Stokes, Martin, ed. (1994) Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place. Oxford: Berg. Straker, Tory (2013) ‘The Recent Past as Historical Representation: The New Zealand Film Out of the Blue (2006)’. Journal of New Zealand and Pacific Studies
 1 (1): 55–73. Toepfer, Bill (Director) (1987) [Film] Walkshort. Front Lawn. Verevis, Constantine (2010) ‘Minoritarian + Cinema’, in Adrian Parr (ed.) The Deleuze Dictionary. Rev. edn. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Waller, Gregory A. (2008) ‘The New Zealand Film Commission: Promoting an Industry, Forging a National Identity’, in Ian Conrich and Stuart Murray (eds) Contemporary New Zealand Cinema: From New Wave to Blockbuster. London: I. B. Tauris: 17–36. Williams, Mark (2008) ‘A Waka on the Wild Side: Nationalism and its Discontents in some Recent New Zealand Films’, in Ian Conrich and Stuart Murray (eds) Contemporary New Zealand Cinema: From New Wave to Blockbuster. London: I. B. Tauris: 181–96. Zwick, Edward (Director) (2003) [Film] The Last Samurai. Warner Bros.

11

Between the Text and the Sub-text: A Reading of Selected Benin Musical Video-Films from Nigeria Osakue S. Omoera and Charles O. Aluede

Ambrose Alli University, Nigeria and Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria

Introduction Nigerian – and indeed African – films are steadily gaining recognition across the world as film festivals, academic conferences/publications and the ubiquitous presence of the internet are creating new ways of accessing them and making them a part of global film discourse. As the African continent is full of diverse peoples and languages, so are there diverse film cultures. In Nigeria, for instance, Melita Zajc (2009: 65) identifies a number of video-film cultures that started as small free enterprises and have become prime media for the articulation of public discourse. Perhaps it is this diversity, and palpable social relevance, that is calling attention to Nigerian and other African films as the new frontiers of world cinema. In fact, Onokoome Okome could not have said a truer thing when he asserts that it is in the plurality of Nollywood’s (Nigerian popular film industry, based in Lagos) multifaceted articulation of its peculiar condition of the present that we begin to unravel its meaning as a visual practice that has withstood being overwhelmed by the tides of global images thus far (2007: 4). Indeed, the Nigerian film industry is arguably the most linguistically and geographically diversified film culture in the world, with typologies such as greater/dominant Nollywood – Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo/English indigenous language films, and minor/growing Nollywood – Benin, Ebira, Esan, Efik and Nupe films, etc. Carmen McCain contends that the multiple language

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industries within Nigeria also contribute to the diversity of themes, styles and approaches to their audiences (2012: 27), although this internal diversity is often neglected in scholarship. Corroborating this, Osakue Omoera (2013a) notes that these micro-national film cultures remain largely underexplored and under-theorized, even though it has been demonstrated  that they are representationally consequential in terms of production output, audience reception, opportunities for contending views, and voices as well as the cultural display of difference. To further instantiate this neglect, McCain (2011a: 48, 2011b: 252–3) reports that at the two-day conference organized by CODESRIA (Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa) at the beginning of FESPACO (Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou) 2011, that examined questions of the relationship of medium, genre and ideology, there was little conversation about the internal variances in Nollywood films, and almost no mention of films made in Nigerian languages: Hausa, Yoruba and less widely spoken languages such as Nupe, Benin, etc. In any case, the fact that the increasingly glocalized Nigerian film ecology was hardly talked about at a major African film festival as recently as 2011 speaks volumes about the kind of politics that surround film festivals such as FESPACO. In spite of this, Nollywood film cultures are getting more and more popular. Indeed, Nollywood is not just one of the largest film industries, but the industry with the largest growth rate in the world. For instance, in 2005 alone, 872 films were produced in video format in Nigeria. These figures place Nigeria on an almost equal footing with India in terms of film production, surpassing that of the United States (UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2009). This is probably because Nollywood films are a less self-consciously political cinematic tradition, which exfoliates itself in idioms that the masses relate to easily. Music has been very influential in the creative exfoliations of these diverse aspects of Nollywood. Drawing on this, we shall here use the Benin videofilm as an ethno-national film culture to explicate the relevance of music in Nollywood. The idea is to extrapolate the socio-cultural essentiality of music in the Nigerian film practice, using the Benin video-film as a basis of analysis. To do this, this chapter uses content analysis, musical notations, linguistic, photographic, historical, and interview methods to examine three Benin language films – Ozedu, Efe Baba and Ukhuedo.



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Deleuze and the location of Nollywood in global film discourse The Nigerian video-film as a form of African media production locates itself outside the scope of Western film training or education that follows the Western and highly orchestrated models at work in the formal school systems (Omoera, 2013b: 41–2). Hence, from the beginning of filmmaking in Nigeria, there has been an attempt to make films that explore issues of popular interest, and sociocultural tropes which make concrete significations among African peoples. This fact is well noted by Jonathan Haynes when he proclaims that ‘from the beginning, there were attempts to create a less intellectual cinema which would appeal to a mass audience’ (1997: 4). Hyginus Ekwuazi (2012) has noted that Nollywood is multilingual, multifaith and diverse, with typologies such as dominant Nollywood (Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo) and marginal Nollywood (Benin, Esan, Nupe, Urhobo, Efik, Afemai). However, recent research (Omoera, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c; Bardi and Omoera, 2014: 259) has demonstrated the linguistic/cultural significance of the so-called marginal Nollywood film cultures. To Lancelot Imasuen, the Benin video-film is second in the ranking of Nollywood film cultures (Imasuen in interview with the authors in June 2013). In spite of the criticism against these films, that is, regardless of the questions of quality and whether they are classified as dominant or marginal films, Matthew Brown argues that Nollywood films have a growing cross-cultural and transnational relevance (2008: 57). The second half of the twentieth century proved to be catalytic for the directions of the respective disciplines of philosophy and film studies, and the work of Deleuze, which was on a critical interdisciplinary cusp, provided pivotal directions of film philosophy. Having critically analysed Deleuze’s revolutionary theory of cinema, Felicity Colman posits that ‘Deleuze creates a very specific open system of thinking about how and what the screen medium does’ (Colman, 2011: 1). Essentially, we find the Deleuzian thought and practice refreshing for his ideas and deep perspectives on Third Cinema and Africology, at a time when it was impossible to do so among Western or European intellectuals and even filmmakers. In fact, scholars and film theorists alike had derided the black race. For instance, as Emevwo Biakolo points out (2013: 2) at least since David Hume the educability and moral/intellectual capacity of the African people had been put into question in this way:

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I am apt to suspect the negroes, and in general all the other species of men […] to be naturally inferior to the whites. There scarcely ever was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures among them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites such as the ancient GERMANS, the present TARTARS, have still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds of men. (Aaron Garrett, 2000)

Biakolo argues, as regards the assumed ingrained inferiority of the African, that there are two related ideas in the point Hume makes: (1) the black race has no individual genius in any realm of life; (2) nor a cultural tradition of inventiveness, creativity or accomplishments however conceived (2013: 2). This kind of reasoning on and about Africa and Africans permeated and dominated the thought patterns, relations and activities of many philosophers, scholars and filmmakers until most of the twentieth century. Okome (2008a: 75) posits that while the image of the black person was subjected to many forms of degradation in early European films about African peoples, the origin of this distortion is found in a number of philosophical formulations about the superiority of the white race over and above the black race, paving the way for colonialism and the wanton destruction and plunder of Africans’ cultural, political and economic life. Ekwuazi in Towards the Decolonization of the African Film explicates further that the making of films such as Tarzan, Ape Man, Saunders of the River, Mr Johnson, The Wild Geese, etc. constituted a barometer for measuring global conceptions of the African film in particular, and Africans generally (1991). But with time, changes in the production and definition of what counts as ‘knowledge’, and, in Africa, the advent of the democratic video technology, this ‘Prospero and Caliban syndrome’ (Ijoma, 1996: 8) has changed dramatically. This is, arguably, in line with Deleuze’s earlier position that a minor cinema does not represent black or peripheral peoples simply as victims, but rather as constructive societies with agency that can take their destinies in their own hands (2012). In this regard, David Martin-Jones demonstrates the usefulness of Deleuze’s film philosophy in analysing contemporary films from Africa, South America, or peripheral European countries as ‘minor’, according to his concept (2009: 214–15). Indeed, Nigerian/African film is on the ascendancy



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and there is no stopping it because its diversified film ecologies, with their transnational potentials, call attention to it. The perceptions of worth of African films, particularly Nollywood films, have shifted (Diawara, 2009; Krings and Okome, 2013). For instance, we can find some academic conferences, journals, professorial chairs, universities’ new subjects, film festivals, etc. across the world, are now entirely devoted to aspects of Nollywood studies. The burgeoning and diverse brands of cinema that are emerging across continental Africa provide evidence of a sophisticated African culture which carries the values, ethics, morals and aesthetics that define the people’s experience and history, including capabilities or habits, aspirations, futures and freedoms (Idahosa, 2014: 1). Without doubt, it is along this trajectory of thought that Nkechinyere Mbakwe (2013: 2) surmises that Nollywood films effectively contribute to and support not only the decolonization of the minds of Africans everywhere, but are also instrumental in healing the collective trauma of black peoples. As Nollywood stories capture and recapture the pan-African experience which is significant for African peoples all over the world, James Tsaaior (2013) asserts that it is the essential character of filmic/cinematic traditions to purvey informed meta/commentaries which negotiate and interrogate national and human conditions. Such meta/commentaries, afforded by film/ cinema and other cultural production networks, initiate and sustain conversations on social, cultural and political engineering processes of nations. The discursive existence is sometimes fluid, endless and free-flowing, such that it implicates a complex of significant issues at the core of national invention and re-invention. The African film tradition as emblematized by Nollywood ostensibly exists at the interface of a social and cultural dialectic, distilling loud and large commentaries and meta-commentaries which narrate Nigerian/African nationhood and re/imagine its place in an age of modernity and global flows. And in the broader context of views on and about African ways of life, and in the specific case of this study – the performing arts such as film and music in Nigeria/Africa – it is high time all agreed that it is a misnomer for African realities to be measured only through Western lenses because African societies and Western societies essentially operate from different socio-cultural worldviews and prisms (Aluede and Eregare, 2011: 163). It is this issue precisely that Deleuze sought to highlight with the ‘minor’ concept, and it is a view that we therefore have wholeheartedly embraced here.

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The Benin people, music and video culture in perspective Benin is located in the Guinea rainforest belt of Nigeria, in the West African sub-region. Benin, according to Osarenren Omoregie (2000: 13), derives from ‘Ubini’, meaning the ‘land of inexhaustible resources’. According to Patrick Igbinovia, the word ‘Benin’ is both a geo-political and demographic-ethnic identity and expression (2010: 14). It refers to the land and the people indi­ genous to the land. Though Benin City is today mainly under Oredo Local Government Area (LGA) of Edo State, Nigeria, the Benin-speaking people (Edo) traditionally still occupy several other LGAs, namely, Egor, Ikpoba-Okha, Orhiomwon, Uhunmwonde, Ovia South-West and Ovia North-East under the existing geo-political arrangement of the country. Founded around 400 bc, Benin City grew into an empire around the tenth century and served as the capital of the Kingdom of Benin and the Benin Empire, which flourished from the fourth through the seventh centuries (Igbinovia, 2010: 11). Aside from currently serving as the capital of Edo State, Benin City remains the traditional headquarters of the Benins at home and in the Diaspora, where the palace of the Oba of Benin is situated. Few traces remain of the structures of the empire admired by the European travellers, traders and explorers as ‘The Great Benin’ (Lugard Aimuiwu, interview with the authors, 2013). Indeed, the Benin people have a long history of a highly developed culture and education. Samuel Okafor (2013) asserts that: As far back as 1495 the Benin Empire maintained a diplomatic presence in Portugal. This strategic relationship did not just stop at a mere mission but extended to areas such as education. Scores of young Benin men were sent out to Portugal to study and lots of them came back with advanced degrees in Medicine, Law and Portuguese Language, to name a few.

Culturally speaking, the Benins stand out among Africans who still revere and cherish their traditional mores and values. Ikhidero Ijeweimen and Anthony Enabudoso (2012: 131) describe them as ‘highly, comprehensively, if not incurably’ religious people, whose beliefs pervade every aspect of their lives including the performing arts forms of music, dance, drama, video-film, etc. In any case, the Benin Oba/king has consistently been emblematized in all Benin art forms, whether old or new, including the Benin video-film. To Kate Ezra, art forms such as sculpture, bronze casting, music and carving, among others, as practised in Benin, are forms of royal art which have the Oba as their centrepiece (1992: 4).



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A diachronic review of the different forms of artistic/media production in Benin would show that landmarks, myths and folklores linked with the Oba have been a major source/repertoire from which indigenous artists have continued to draw inspiration (Omoera, 2013d: 64). The Benin video culture is an aspect of Nollywood in which the Benin music continues to be one of the chief idioms of communication. Taiye Adeola observes that music has the capacity to generate patterns of behaviour in society (2011: 20–1), as is evident from the relationship between the content of music and the patterns of human organizations and human interaction. This is most manifest in traditional African societies, including Benin, where in the words of Meki Nzewi, ‘the musical arts codify the philosophy of African life systems, reflecting the meaning and processes of communal living’ (1991: 10). This chapter is concerned with the Benin musical video-film genre that is probably one of the trendiest in the video culture’s evolutionary development. Films in this class combine operatic characteristics of music traditions of old with popular Benin dances such as ‘Esakpaide’, ‘Ugho’, among others, and give them dramatic twists against contemporary discourses in Beninland. For example, Wagie Emwenma Gha Yema’s (2008) preachment, in the main, calls for a rallying of the Benin people for the advancement of the race in an increasingly competitive world. It is an extraordinary commentary on the need for the Benins to close ranks regardless of class, economic power, political and religious orientations or intellectual endowments in advancing the cause of the Edo (Benin) nation, thereby taking the Benin culture to what Aimiuwu calls the next level of civilization, in which the people will realize their dreams and aspirations.

Between the text and the sub-text in film/video Generally, a film can be engaged through a painstaking appreciation of the different associations between the audience’s experiences and the film’s text and sub-text that the audience arrives at after or while watching the film. Hence, Bernard Dick (1978: 26) submits that film/video could influence the behaviour of the audience positively or negatively only when they have a grasp of the different types of associations that can exist between them and the film and also, what those associations entail. Dick further posits that:

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The text is the plot in the Aristotelian sense of the word, that is, the order and arrangement of the incidents, their narrative structure and the form that structure takes […]. However, great literature is not one-dimensional; there is also the sub-text, the complex structure beneath text comprising the various associations the text evokes in us. (1978: 26)

The text is a result of the collaboration between a director, a screenwriter/ scriptwriter, a cast and a crew; the sub-text is the harmonization of the text and the various associations it evokes in the audience. This presupposes that the text of a film is the message a viewer perceives from its surface value and it is, more often than not, readily understood from watching the film even for the first time. But the sub-text, according to Daniel Omatsola (2008: 153), is buried or embedded in the inner fabric of the film. Drawing on Dick (1978: 30), there are four main ways in which a film/video can bring the viewer (audience) into its inner world. These are: mythic associations; visual associations; intellectual associations; and, importantly for us, musical associations. York Tindall in Dick (1978: 84) conceptualizes myth as ‘a dreamlike narrative in which the individual’s central concerns are united with society, time and universe’. This shows that myths are not necessarily falsehood, especially in film practices. Dick further contends that: Myths are ultimate truths about life and death, fate and nature, God and man. Thus, myths can never be false; they endure long after the civilizations that produced them vanish because they crystallize in narrative form unchanging patterns of human behaviour. (1978)

It is not surprising therefore that myth is used in Benin films. This is because both film and myth employ images, and also because both are associated with the dream, an experience common to everyone. Mary Nwaeke (2004: 34) observes that each individual’s dreams are perhaps based on his/her innermost desires and fantasies. Thus, when such an individual encounters the same situation (as in his/her dreams) in a film, he/she immediately identifies with it and appreciates its essence. ‘Making a mythic association involves remembering a pattern of experience that could be said to be universal’ (Dick, 1978). In the view of Omatsola (2008: 155), the sub-text of a film could also be appreciated through visual associations, particularly the proper use of typecasting and some camera techniques. But more importantly for us here, is the fact that musical associations too can be made through either a film’s text or sub-text. In this regard, Dick (1978: 105) asserts that:



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When music belongs to the text, it is a narrative device that advances the plot. Sometimes music provides the explanation for a character’s behaviour. In the subtext, music has even more function; it can be used as an added element to the action or as a leitmotif; for irony or characterization; as a means of identifying races and nationalities or as the basis for the film structure (1978: 105).

According to the doyen of the Benin video-film, Ozin Oziengbe, music is profusely used to advance the plots/thematic visions in the Benin video culture (Ozin Oziengbe, interview with the authors, 2014). Audiences have learned how to associate a particular music with particular actions or reactions. In fact, music often heightens audience’s expectations. In the context of film analysis, Omatsola (2008: 154–5) has noted that textual and sub-textual analyses refer to syntagmatic/denotative and connotative/paradigmatic readings respectively. He further contends that an analysis of both the surface and inner structure of film will not only produce some level of objective reading, it will help the viewer/ reader gain critical insights about the filmic weavings, and can also possibly enhance the quality of subsequent productions within a film culture. Whereas syntagmatic analysis studies the ‘surface’ of a text, paradigmatic analysis seeks to identify the various paradigms (or pre-existing sets of signifiers) which underlie the manifest content of the text. It is on the basis of this that we isolate some Benin musical films for examination in this chapter.

Textual/syntagmatic reading of Ozedu, Efe Baba and Ukhuedo Title of Film Ozedu Osaradion Enogieru Director Producer Rainbow Entertainment Date 2009 Country Nigeria Filmic Time 68 Minutes Daniel Uwadiae, Joseph Igiozee, Erhauyi Ogbeide, Helen Obasohan. Starring Ozedu (2009) captures the feud that erupts between wives in the traditional Benin polygamous household using musical drama to highlight the intrigues, manoeuvres and dangers, inherent in these family set-ups in Africa. In the video, Omosigho vows to use whatever means, including voodoo, to fight her marriage mate, Ekomwenre, and it is on the consequences that follow that

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the film plot is constructed. The film contains several operatic/performance streams/tracks such as ‘Odo’, ‘Ohen-ebe’, ‘Okhuo’, ‘Iyodor’, etc, but ‘Odo’ will be highlighted as a representative musical stream. Title of Film Efe Baba Director Nosa Ada Peaceman Midland Sound Production Producer Date 2009 Country Nigeria Filmic Time 73 Minutes Starring Jane Ekhator, Jolly Odeh, Sweet Inneh, Osakue Enogie, Akugbe Osagiede. Efe Baba (2009) musically satirizes the disgusting attitude of sons who wait for the death of their parents so that they will inherit landed properties. Accordingly, such first sons in Benin are now euphemistically called landlordin-waiting. In this film, Osagie refuses to go to school, or to learn a trade or craft, but seeks instead the early death of his father so that he can inherit his father’s old house and live on tenants’ rent. He busies himself with epicurean activities, which aches the feeble mind of his father. In the end, Osagie’s younger ones grow up to become responsible members of society while the house, where he is landlord-in-waiting, collapses on his head. The video contains several operatic/performance tracks such ‘Ikuarhedo’, ‘Eeyo’, etc. and ‘Eeyo’ will be paradigmatically analysed to underscore the musical essence of the film. Figure 12 shows Eguavoen Iyengumwena deftly stringing the ‘Agidigbo’ in Efe Baba. Title of Film Ukhuedo Osaretin Igbinomwanhia Director Producer Moonlight Audio/Video Production Date 2010 Country Nigeria Filmic Time 65 Minutes Starring  Wilson Ehigiator, Nelson Iyengumwena, Sandra Aigbegun, Osasu West. Ukhuedo (2010) decries the lack of interest in indigenous Benin language and culture by the younger generations. In the film, a chief ’s son, Egbe, played by Wilson Ehigiator, who claims that he just arrived from Europe, stuns his



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Figure 12  Eguavoen Iyengumwena deftly stringing the ‘Agidigbo’ in Efe Baba, dir. Nosa Ada Peaceman, Midland Sound Production, 2009

parents and members of the extended family by refusing to greet his elders in the family/lineage tongue. Apart from speaking a form of English slang which is incoherent to all except to him, he engages in vices that bring shame to his family. In the end, the long arm of the law catches up with him. But after serious scolding from family members, he kneels to greet ‘Lamogun’ – a greeting script used by members of the Oba’s family in Benin. This in itself is a cultural mark of nobility and distinction. This stream of action is the background within which other situations in the film unfold. The film has many songs, but two song tracks, ‘Agbonmahiren’ and ‘Imade’ will be paradigmatically analysed to underscore the musical essence of the film.

Sub-textual/paradigmatic analyses of Ozedu, Efe Baba and Ukhuedo Music plays a very important role in these films: it underlines psychological refinements, builds a sense of continuity and creates a more convincing atmosphere of time and place (Akpughe and Odogbor, 2011: 209). In Benin, much music is woven into storytelling, now increasingly mediated by the video technology. Music in this regard is used as preludes, interludes and postludes during performances. The involvement of music in storytelling, drama, etc. has

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omni-functional effects. As early as 1958, John Dewey had already alluded to the might of music in the following terms: If all meaning could be adequately expressed by words, the art of painting and music would not exist, there are values and meanings that can be expressed only by immediately audible and visible qualities and to ask what they mean in the sense of something that can be put into words is to deny their distinctive existence (1958: 74).

As a result of the importance of music in the achievement of many aims in Benin films, many technical devices are employed in the performance of their songs, as can be heard in Ozedu, Efe Baba and Ukhuedo, the musical films whose inner weavings and undercurrents we seek to unfurl in this section. Worthy of discussion are: a. The use of apt proverbs in songs b. Singing styles c. Re-enactment of and enhancement of storytelling in songs d. Tonal nature of Benin songs e. Showcasing Benin musical instruments and dances, some of which are close to extinction f. The resourceful use of repetition.

The use of apt proverbs in songs Song texts as used in Benin musical films are replete with apt proverbs that are fused into the music, to further enhance the message being conveyed. In traditional African milieus, proverbs act as catalysts of knowledge, wisdom, philosophy, ethics and morals. While Kofo Ademola (2008) asserts that proverbs enrich language giving in-depth meaning to words, Mokitimi (1997) contends that they provoke further reflection and call for deeper thinking. Indeed, Omoera and Inegbeboh (2013: 18) posit that proverbs are artistic embodiments that can engage, provoke, evoke or prod human thoughts/ ideas tangibly and intangibly. Although the use of proverbs is universal, in the films under investigation, the high degree of craftsmanship in the weaving of apt proverbs with strong cultural tendencies into songs is discernible. The proverbs are used not only to artistically lengthen and enrich the dialogues in the films but to give the viewer clearer interpretations of the storylines. For



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example, the song ‘Agbonmahiren’, which is excerpted from the film Ukhuedo, reads that: Text in Benin Aghi wero omavbie Na wiero gha ren No wumwenro ghi khien ogboyo

Translation Nothing can be hidden forever When the deceived becomes wise The deceiver becomes the fool

Again, in Ozedu, we are told that it is not possible to completely tell of another person’s behaviour – see the text and its translation below: Translation Text in Benin Agie omwan mavban One cannot perfectly tell of another’s behaviour Omwan te mwen no khin  It is the individual who does so in conduct Another proverb which is considered below goes beyond enriching the music into revealing the Benin worldview and conceptualizes how the marriage institution is conceived among the people. It reads: Translation Text in Benin Odo! Nukpon ni yayiengbe My husband! Do not tear apart La ho esolo na gbonghe (You) the cloth which I use to cover – do not tear apart Lest the world will see my nudity Mien emwin ne ugbon gue The proverb is often woven into recitatives within the melodic fabric of the songs. The music is often themed on didactic, philosophical, archetypal or religious phenomena. It also saliently explains the family value system of the Benin people, who regard the husband as the ‘shield with which a woman protects herself ’. This does not obviate the fact that women are also revered in this cultural milieu, as instances abound in Benin historiography where women such as Iden, Idia and Emotan played prominent roles in protecting the land, hence, their recognition in the Benin ancestral pantheon. However, there is strong intolerance for same-sex marital relations in all Benin communities. Without doubt the proverbs and songs in Ozedu, Efe Baba and Ukhuedo are didactic. They contain traditional mores and genealogical greeting patterns. For example, in the film Ukhuedo, it is contended that the way you greet tells

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your lineage/family tree within the Benin locality. Hence, there is a traditional insistence that children in Benin-speaking communities use proper greeting scripts which readily show their lineages or families while greeting the elderly, especially in the mornings (Egharevba, 2005: 79; Omoera, 2014c). It is this observably dying tradition the film tries to partly address with the creation of songs from extant Benin greeting scripts which are musically sprinkled with flourishes of proverbs and dance steps. Although Egharevba (2005: 80) admits that the English salutation ‘Good Morning’ is rapidly ousting the traditional Benin salutation pattern, LawalOsula (2005) maintains that the lineage/family greetings are a distinguishing cultural mark and identity of the black race which subsist only among the Benins. The video revolution in Beninland has helped to rearticulate and popularize this cultural heritage among the younger generations. This function has also been acknowledged in the larger Nollywood. Mbakwe actually argues that Nigerian home videos effectively store wisdom as well as educate on traditional values (2013: 5). At the Benin video scene we see this profusely playing out as many of the films ‘can be read as social diaries’ (Okome, 2008b: 7). At any rate, one of the major aesthetic qualities of Benin musical videos is that they are often very poetic and suffused with striking images. For instance in Efe Baba, a salient and instructive proverbial musical rendering reads: Test in Benin Translation E no ye aro ye ebata idionmwan The one who is eyeing the shoes of an old man Owe oghaya ye ihimwin Will trek on barefoot to the shades

Singing styles As part of the technical devices used in the vocal delivery of Benin songs, complementary duets are used. Musically speaking, a duet is a composition vocal or instrumental, in two parts or for two performers. In the case of the Benin musical videos, the two parts are really not independent of each other. Rather, the second part serves to embellish or enhance the original melody. This is of course why the technique is thus referred to as a complement to the original melody, hence, the choice of the phrase, complementary duet. In the



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film, Ukhuedo, the song, ‘Agbonmahiren’ is an example of a complementary duet and it is notated below.

Call and response According to Agu (1999: 17), A large number of African songs are categorized under a call and response pattern. In this genre, the soloist, who is the leader of a group, intones the song, and sings a phrase referred to as the call, while the chorus or choir responds with another short phrase or musical sentence which differ in text and melody from the call. Both sections even differ in rhythmical structures in many cases.

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This technique runs through all the songs in Ozedu, Efe Baba and Ukhuedo. As they are traditionally composed, they follow the call and response pattern. Within this pattern, the chorus is seen to be further broken in parts in heterophony. In the context of the films under investigation, heterophony is used to describe a musical presentation in which aside the melody, two or more performers produce almost the same tones akin to the original melodies at different intervals. This tendency is noticeable in the song ‘Eeyo’ in Efe Baba. This is consistent with the earlier observation Andrew Kaye made as regards African musical experience and film score (2007).



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Re-enactment of and enhancement of storytelling in songs Storytelling has been one of the major arts in Beninland and indeed Africa. Elders who have always been seen as repositories of knowledge and wisdom have been at the fore in the promotion of this art. At some points, some efforts have been made by both government and non-governmental authorities to re-introduce this art to primary schools with little or no success. Today, with the availability of video technologies, storytelling and other art forms have been enhanced and popularized among the Benin-speaking people at home and in the Diaspora. In ‘Eeyo’ a song excerpt from the film, Efe Baba, we see the elderly playing ‘Agidigbo’ (thumb piano) to youngsters while telling a story of the historical feats of past Obas/kings. That the instrument is being played and the story being told by the same elder goes to further emphasize the age-long belief that they, the elders, are regarded as the storehouse of wisdom that should be listened to. And of course the new film culture which has been embraced in the area is helping to fine-tune, glamorize and uphold this tradition.

Of the tonal nature of Benin songs When we say a language is tonal we imply that the meaning of its terms is contingent on the pattern of sound associated with their words or that the meaning of a word is adduced from the way the word is sounded. The Benin, which is more or less the ‘mother’ of all other Edoid dialects, is tonal. For example, the song ‘Imade’ in the film, Ukhuedo is a name of a person. It is pronounced monotonously on the tonic, mediant or even dominant note. Here ‘Imade’ means ‘I have not fallen’. The name in full means ‘I have not fallen into the snares of the enemy.’ However, if pronounced from the tonic note to the median it means ‘we are coming’. This is clearly shown in the opening bar of the music below:

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The use of overlaps Overlapping occurs in African songs when the soloist’s part overlaps the chorus section, and vice versa. This occurs in two different ways. First, the chorus enters just before or on the last note of the solo section, and overlapping occurs. Second, if the soloist takes his cue while the chorus is still on, overlapping occurs (Agu, 1999: 27). In ‘Odo’, a song from the film, Ozedu in bar 9 of the music below, we can hear the chorus coming in before the end of the soloist’s section. This is in confirmation of the fact that there is evidence of overlapping in the performance of Benin songs.



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Showcasing Benin musical instruments and dances some of which are at the verge of extinction Although from an ethno-organology perspective, the Benin people do not enjoy the exclusive use of ‘Agidigbo’, its continued use in Benin musical ensembles is being threatened by modern day musical instruments. In Efe Baba and Ukhuedo, a wave of musico/cultural renaissance is experienced. One, ‘Agidigbo’, a semi-extinct musical instrument in Benin culture is given a place of pride as it is primarily used to accompany the song stream of ‘Eeyo’ in Efe Baba. Two, in the same spirit of renaissance certain traditional Benin dances such as ‘Ugho’, ‘Esakpaide’ and ‘Ewuwuagba’ which Omoruan and Aluede (2012: 473) claim have ‘the finger of royalty’, have been refigured, repositioned, and contemporized by the rave video culture in the Benin locality.

The resourceful use of repetition There is ample use of repetition in the Benin musical films under investigation. For instance, in the ‘Eeyo’ song stream of Efe Baba, ‘Eeyo’ is dexterously

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repeated to musically or poetically flavour and bring to the fore the domestic issue of the sex of a child which perennially tug at the heart of the average Benin person. The words of Bowra (1962: 20), though in a slightly different context, holds true in this regard: When words are made to conform to a musical tune, they provide one of the most elemental forms of poetry known to us; they are reduced to a deliberate order and made to fulfil a function quite different from that of the common talk.

Indeed, the issue of having or not having a male child has brought down dynasties, led to divorce suits, wife-battering in homes, extended family skirmishes, community clashes, etc. in the Benin locality. It is this crisis of the virtually baseless preference of the male child by the average Benin person that the content creators of Efe Baba address by the use of the ‘Eeyo’ repetition to draw attention to the fact that whether a child is male or female is irrelevant but the kind of training and upbringing the child gets goes a long way to determine whether the child will grow up to become a responsible member of the society or not. There are many other instances of ‘partial or full repetitions at the lexicostructural, lexical or semantic levels’ (Ighile, 2010: 135), which deepens one’s appreciation of the songs in Efe Baba, Ozedu and Ukhuedo as well as their commentaries on important matters of the day. Some salient examples can be found in ‘Imade’ and ‘Evbaekhin’ song tropes of Ukhuedo. While ‘Imade’ is repeatedly used to underscore the altercations between two irresponsible women (daughter/Abieyuwa and mother/Imade in the context of the film), ‘Evbaekhin’ recitative highlights some serio-comic tendencies of the musical video. Here, a Libya/European returnee played by Sandra Aigbogun – many Benin youth have a penchant for travelling abroad – while trying to board anglicizes the pronunciation of ‘Akpapkava’, a popular street in Benin City, to a cab/taxi driver. The driver, knowing her type full well, catches on her pretence to hike the fare from 50 naira – about a cent – to 200 naira – about a dollar – only for her to brashly switch to Benin vernacular that ‘Akpapkava’ Street is not far off. This ties up with the common parlance that repetition is the deep law of impression.

That Benin musical films be better: in lieu of conclusion In Nigeria and indeed much of Africa, music is crucial to the functioning of visual literature and art. The socio-cultural relevance of Benin musical videos



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in the age of globalization is underlined by their capacity to contemporize issues that resonate meaningfully within and beyond the Benin locality. The dominance of music as part of the Benin people’s culture and the attraction and attachment of the society at various levels is strongly indicated in the volume of video works that have been made, and the ever-surging enthusiasm of the Benin-speaking audience to be part of the experience. This, perhaps, explains why Ekwuazi claims that ‘every film is an audio-visual cultural encyclopedia and, therefore, a cultural experience’ (1991b: 98). This presupposes that beliefs, attitudes and values implicit in any film tend to reverberate with those beliefs, attitudes and values which are dominant in the society from which the film originates (Ekwuazi, 1991b: 99). However, there are vocal, visual and musical inconsistencies or discontinuities that tend to infringe/impinge on the textual and sub-textual meanings of the films. In Efe Baba, a supposedly aged father once clothed in old man’s clothes and seated on a wooden bench while advising his son, Osagie, is also seen within the same scene as a youngster who dances vigorously to a musical tune. In the Abieyuwa/daughter and the Imade (mother) scene in Ukhuedo, Abieyuwa is seen pointing the finger of scorn at her mother and calling her by her first name. This is absolutely anti-Benin/anti-African culture wherein respect for elderly ones is most highly held. If cultural films of this nature are to truly retain their didactic essence, they need to represent/portray the people’s culture rightly. Again, Abieyuwa should not have been seen dancing since she (Abieyuwa, the daughter) is the one being scolded/admonished by Imade, the mother. The issue is further complicated as Abieyuwa dances in royal style, heavily adorned with beads and fine regalia. This ought not to be so, considering the issues in question. One can easily go away with the impression that the film is celebrating deviant behaviour. Besides, there are limited melodic compasses in dialogues in the films. Most of the dialogues are within the musical interval of a perfect fourth. Poor tonal inflection as encumbrance to proper interpretation in song texts is in itself a problem. In search of perhaps melodic finesse, performers unconsciously mispronounce words which in turn displace the meaning of song texts. This poor artistry in video sound has earlier been observed in the larger Nollywood when Ekwuazi noted that ‘the soundtrack gives you a headache because it just narrates the whole story repeatedly – so much for suspense and intrigue’ (2008: 135). In the traditional Benin society and indeed in Africa, songs and music must match their social context (Aluede, 2010: 1). This implies that one is not

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expected to sing certain songs during birthday/burial ceremonies or vice versa. In listening to the musical video-films under survey, some of the renditions are not in sync with the instances being portrayed. In African societies, the context of musical performance and the use of certain songs is restricted. This control appears to be played down in the films. It is in view of this that we suggest that Benin filmmakers and indeed filmmakers in other segments of Nollywood pay more attention to cultural nuances and details and take advantage of current developments in film production to shore up the quality of their creative works in order to have a considerable presence at both the local and international arenas. Music, apart from reinforcing the edutainment functions of Benin films, assists in the combustive creative process through which films serve as social diaries that reflect the everyday occurrences of the average Nigerian as seen from the Benin video-film’s eye. Music in Benin video-films is replete with abundant apt proverbs with a weaving of recitatives into the melodic fabric of the songs. These films contain songs with unique singing styles where complementary duets are very pronounced. Beyond edutainment, music is themed on didactic, philosophical, archetypal and religious phenomena. This explains why a large number of the Benin people are enamoured of this genre of film. The profoundness of music in the Benin video-film is underlined by the exuberant nature of songs that are hardly found in other Nigerian film cultures. This chapter has considered musical video-films within the Benin language subsection of the Nigerian film tradition. It discussed how the flexible technology of digital video has helped to negotiate and boost the appreciation and recognition of Benin films in the global arena. It noted that the video-film as an aesthetic medium for mediating and recapturing what the theatre has been doing across the ages can/should be innovatively used to further re-propagate/ revive cultural interest in the performing arts in the Benin locality, and de-contextualize it for new aesthetic, social and economic ends.

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Nwaeke, M. E. (2004) ‘Film Messaging and Audience Perception: A Study of Pretty Woman’. Unpublished MA diss. Theatre Arts and Mass Communication, Arts, University of Benin. Nzewi, M. (1991) Musical Practice and Creativity: An African Traditional Perspective. Bayreuth: Iwalewa Haus, University of Bayreuth. Okafor, S. (2013) ‘Igbo scholar disgraces Femi Fani-kayode’, Nairaland, 20 August 20, 1. Available online: http://www.nairaland.com/1404136/igbo-scholar-disgracesfemi-fani-kayode [accessed 23 August 2013]. Okome, O. (2007) ‘Nollywood: Africa at the Movies’, Film International 5 (4): 4–9. Okome, O. (2008a) ‘Film Theory and Criticism: From World Cinema to the Nigerian Cinema’, International Journal of Multi-Disciplinary Scholarship (Special Issue – Motion Picture in Nigeria) 3–5: 64–79. Okome, O. (2008b) ‘Introduction to this Special Issue: Ibadan and the New School of Media Studies in Nigeria’, International Journal of Multi-Disciplinary Scholarship (Special Issue – Motion Picture in Nigeria), 3–5: 1–7. Omatsola, D. (2008) ‘The Structuralist Paradigm of Criticism of Nollywood Films: God is Great and Time to Kill’. International Journal of Multi-Disciplinary Scholarship (Special Edition – Motion Picture in Nigeria) 3–5: 153–66. Omoera, O. S. (2008a) ‘Benin Visual Literature and the Frontiers of Nollywood’, International Journal of Multi-Disciplinary Scholarship (Special Issue- Motion Picture in Nigeria) 3–5: 234–48. Omoera, O. S. (2008b) ‘A Taxonomic Analysis of the Benin Video-film’. Ijota: Ibadan Journal of Theatre Arts 2–4: 39–55. Omoera, O. S. (2013a) ‘Nollywood Unbound: Benin Language Video-film as Paradigm’, Africa Update XX (1): 1–10. Omoera, O. S. (2013b) ‘Bridging the Gap: Answering the Questions of Crime, Youth Unemployment and Poverty through Film Training in Benin, Nigeria’, in M. Hjort (ed.), The Education of the Filmmaker in Africa, the Middle East and the Americas. New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 39–57. Omoera, O. S. (2014a) ‘Audience Reception of the Benin Language Video Film in Nollywood’, Journal of African Cultural Studies 26 (1): 69-81. Available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2013.822793 [accessed 13 December 2013] Omoera, O. S. (2014b) ‘An Assessment of the Economics of the Benin Language Film in Nigeria’, Quarterly Review of Film and Video 31 (5): 387–400. Available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2012.679516 [accessed 21 May 2014] Omoera, O. S. (2014c) ‘Audience Reception of the Benin Video Film’, unpublished PhD Thesis, Theatre Arts, Arts, University of Ibadan. Omoera, O. S. and Inegbeboh, B. O. (2013) ‘Context of Usage and Aesthetics of Selected Proverbs from Southern Nigeria’. Journal of Language, Entrepreneurship & Technology in Africa 4 (1): 1–30.

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Omoregie, O. S. B. (2000) ‘Forty Q&A on Ubiniology’, in O. S. B. Omoregie (ed.) Great Benin: A Handbook on Ubiniology. Benin City: Noreso Publishers Limited: 10–35. Omoruan, D. and Aluede, C. O. (2012) ‘The Finger of Royalty in Selected Benin Dances’, in O. S. Omoera, S. Adeyemi and B. Binebai (eds) A Gazelle of the Savannah: Sunday Ododo and the Framing of Techno-cultural Performance in Nigeria 11. Rochester: Alpha Crownes Publishers: 472–83. Tsaaior, J. (2013) ‘Editorial’. SMC Journal of Cultural and Media Studies 2 (1): 1–2. UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2009) ‘Information Sheet No. 1: Analysis of the UIS International Survey of Feature Film Statistics’. Available online: http://www.uis. unesco.org/FactSheets/Documents/Infosheet_No1_cinema_EN.pdf [accessed 7 June 2014] Zajc, M. (2009) ‘Nigerian Video Film Cultures’, Anthropological Notebooks 15 (1): 65–85.

12

Music and African Identity in the Films of Flora Gomes Carolin Overhoff Ferreira

Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Brazil

Florentino (Flora) Gomes is, without doubt, the most expressive and internationally recognized filmmaker of the PALOP (Países de língua oficial portuguesa/ Countries with Portuguese as official language). His films have already attracted some critical attention (Murphy and William, 2007; Arenas, 2011; Ferreira, 2012).1 However, their musical aspects have, on the other hand, not been the focus of analysis, even though they are an important tool in his construction of a postcolonial identity. Guinea-Bissau was a Portuguese colony from the fifteenth century until its declaration of Independence on 24 September 1973. It was thus not only Portugal’s first African settlement but also the first new nation state to separate itself from the empire. Ever since, its history has been characterized by political conflicts such as civil wars and military coups. In Flora Gomes’s first film – Mortu Nega (Those Whom Death Refused) (1988), produced entirely with financial means from Guinea-Bissau and which engages with the war of Independence, already pointing out future struggles – there were few moments that allowed for music. However, given its interest in reflecting on an expression of a sense of community, traditional instruments and chanting is an important feature of the film. In fact, the film’s ending stresses the importance of native rhythms in a ceremonial that aims to bring changes to the internal disagreements that followed the fight against colonialism. His next film, Udji Azui de Yonta (The Blue Eyes of Yonta) (1992), is a low-budget co-production with Portugal about the difficulties of constructing a postcolonial identity in Guinea-Bissau. Music again plays a subtle role, but it is also an essential element in the discussion of the title’s heroine, Yonta’s,

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lifestyle that is torn between Western influences and her Guinean identity in the making. Tree of Blood (1996), a film with higher production values due to a wider range of co-producers that include France and Tunisia, engages more strongly with traditional culture, its production of oral stories, images and objects: and also of music. Songs as cultural references are less important in the film than other symbolic expressions, especially storytelling. Still, music is once again an indicator of identity construction. Nha Fala (My Voice) (2002), the filmmaker’s last feature, represents a major leap in terms of the significance that music plays in Gomes’s films. Not only is the film a musical, singing is also its topic. Moreover, it is featured as a way to free oneself from ancestral superstitions, but also as a possibility to engage, even though almost uncritically, with Western technology and culture and thus promote a positive contemporary image of Africa. By discussing the importance of music in Flora Gomes’s work, this chapter has two aims. First, it will show how profoundly the soundtracks are linked with his notion of national or transnational identity in the making. Second, it will discuss the relation between music and identity in the light of Gilles Deleuze’s definition of ‘minor cinema’ as that which seeks to invent a people that have been doubly colonized – by the colonizer’s history, and by their own myths.

Music in the films of Flora Gomes Mortu Nega (Those Whom Death Refused) (1988) While all his following films are co-productions with the former colonizer, Portugal – among other countries – that discuss the tension between Western influences and the preservation of traditional culture and values, Flora Gomes’s premiere as a filmmaker was a genuinely national production, subsidized by the Guinean Film Institute. Those Whom Death Refused centres on the construction of the country’s identity during its transition from colonial to postcolonial times by using the story of a couple, the peasant Diminga (Bia Gomes) and her husband, the freedom fighter Sako (Tunu Eugénio Almada), their suffering and hopes related to the anticolonial struggle. The first part of the film, dedicated to the last year of the war, works partly within the war film genre. But as a low-budget art film, it differs from what



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we have come to understand as representative of the genre, even though there is a clear antagonist. The beginning of the film gives an idea of how music is employed. It starts with a very short music piece while the screen is still black. In fact, it is only a chanted expression in Creole – ‘há sinale’ meaning ‘there is a sign’ – and a strong but equally short tambour percussion. The dramatic appeal of this piece stands in contrast with the slow pace of the first shots that show a group of children, adolescents, women – among them Diminga – and soldiers picking up and then carrying munitions and arms from the frontier with Guinea Conacry, independent from France since 1958, to the front line. The music, all of which was written by Sidónio Pais Quaresma and Djamuno Dabé, is a first call for participation followed by people of all ages and from quite different regions of the country. They have come together to undertake the arduous task of carrying weapons by foot through the country, overcoming numerous obstacles such as helicopter attacks, land mines, attacks of a village and the sometimes hostile nature of the terrain. Since the film has no interest in exploiting the spectacle of war or in presenting a demeaning portrayal of the enemy, this march is its main focus. Indeed, it stages the anticolonial fight as an act of solidarity, which takes the form of a long walk through the country. The march has a metaphorical dimension as the path towards independence and a dramatic function since it binds the colonial and postcolonial parts together. Its main feature consists, however, in pointing towards the construction of a national identity in the making. It is continuously invoked to demonstrate that becoming a people with a collective purpose and identity requires an insistent effort, first during the war but also, or particularly, when it is over. On this, Gomes closely follows the ideas of Amílcar Cabral,2 the famous Guinean intellectual, anti-colonialist freedom fighter and agronomist who studied in Portugal in the late 1950s and founded the PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde) that fought and won the war of independence. In his Revolution in Guinea (1970) he mentions the concept of the march when remembering the young intellectuals Agostinho Neto, Mario de Andrade, Marcelino Dos Santos, Vasco Cabral and Eduardo Mondlane, leaders of the independence movements in the PALOP, who had met as students in Portugal: ‘All of us, in Lisbon, some permanently, others temporarily, began this march, this already long march towards the liberation of our peoples’ (Cabral, 1970: 76–7). Gomes visually translates the idea of the march during the sequences of the war. Accordingly, the first thirty minutes are dedicated to shots of people

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walking towards the frontline. The music, which consists either of songs performed in a low key, flute tunes and short tambour, or ukulele pieces, punctuates its course and indicates its mostly joyful spirit. Occasionally a group of people sings together to demonstrate their solidarity and sense of collectivity. Whereas the pieces are always short and sometimes just a few notes long, they are repeatedly employed to create analogies between earlier scenes, indicating that the march and the feeling it involves are continuous. The very first shots may serve as an example of this method. While the titles blend in, we see the soldiers and the common people marching through a high grass savannah. The soldiers walk quietly, zigzagging from the back of the shot to its front, while the people are humming a song that increases in volume once they get closer to the foreground, signalling their communion, willpower and disposition to act together. As the sequence goes on and the path gets gradually more difficult and starts costing lives, there is no more music. Only when the group of soldiers and civilians finally arrives at the camp, do they commemorate their reunion (at night with traditional percussion played by the soldiers), singing and dancing. It is a celebration of having overcome the obstacles: a war dance, with guns lifted in the air, and the confirmation of their community and reunion. But the celebratory spirit of the moment is soon overshadowed by the difficulties of fighting for freedom. Gomes juxtaposes a sequence that foregrounds the ambivalence of victory and defeat, the desire for independence and the high toll it takes: after listening to a radio report on a victorious battle at the Fort of Bula, which cost ten enemy lives, a soldier to whom Diminga had just been talking passes away. At the front Diminga gets to meet her husband. While the reencounter is a happy one, the arms supply implies that the war is entering its decisive phase. This ambivalence is again stressed with music. The moment of the couple’s encounter and the military offensive in which Sako then participates are linked with a few flute notes that introduce a melancholic quality and mark the connection between personal life and political struggle. The flute is actually the couple’s leitmotif that not only underscores their mutual caring but also their sorrow. The sorrowful pitch therefore reappears soon after the soldiers return from the battlefield to the camp and hear that Amílcar Cabral has been murdered. A sad melody sung softly in Creole by a female voice signposts that the war for independence is necessary but means, above all, suffering: ‘I remember how Morés received my spirit/I remember how Komo received my spirit/ the rebellion grows apace/ it spreads on Komo island’. War is a terrible undertaking, and the film leaves no doubt about this.



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There is, on the other hand, no possibility of avoiding more battles and further deaths. In order to signal the acceptance of more fighting, the sound of fast-paced tambour percussion accompanies the soldiers who are moving towards the front in the following sequence. The most intense war scenes of the film now take place. Even though the event is dramatized with the help of the extra-diegetic drumming, the sequence is again in tune with Amílcar Cabral’s viewpoint that the war was not against the Portuguese people but against colonialism (1970: 155). There is no ideological condemnation of the colonizers, who do not even appear, only the manifest desire to expel them. Once the native soldiers that fought for the colonizer to surrender, they therefore insist: ‘we are all brothers’. Whereas the war now seems to be over, the film does not stage a clear-cut or official end, no celebration of a specific moment or date, and no feelings of resentment towards the colonizer. It rather makes perceptible that the march – as a process of decolonization and political change – will go on. Accordingly, the music remains on a low and melancholic key instead of becoming festive. There are two reasons: the fighting needs to carry on and the war’s sequels can already be perceived. Sako has a wounded foot that will hospitalize him for a month. And there are again personal costs, since the couple needs to separate once more. Sako asks Diminga to return to her village, which she had left nine years ago when her children became victims of the war. Two farewell scenes are dedicated to the couple’s feelings. In the first, when Sako speaks to Diminga about her departure, the woman’s voice we heard before sings a sorrowful melody again. Their desolation is then linked to the war, and the same low register invades a short sequence in which the soldiers sit together, clean their weapons and sing a sad tune that, nonetheless, also expresses their union. In the leave-taking scene between Sako and Diminga the flute we heard when they reunited now underlines Diminga’s sadness. Between her departure and that of the soldiers in the previous scene, Gomes constructs another musical analogy. While the men leave for yet another battle, accompanied by a song sung by a male voice, Diminga and an elderly lady she has befriended take up their march while the woman’s voice sings another woeful song. It comments on the recent past and its gloomy events that need to be overcome: ‘I too bear the memories of the struggle/I too feel the suffering of all mothers/I too bear the marks of suffering/… will never speak of it/ […].’ The new phase, related to the overcoming of the war’s suffering, is again seen as simultaneous to the ongoing combat and its further losses.

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But the end of the war also entails the overcoming of repression and conflict. This is articulated in different scenes: one before Diminga’s departure, and others during her long walk home. In the first scene school children are already learning that the war ended at Komo; then, when marching through the country – now straight towards the screen or parallel to it and not in zigzags anymore – small events indicate the change of paradigm under way and the joy associated with it. The most moving scene occurs when the two women see children playing war in an ancient Portuguese fortress. Once they know about the end of the war, they start jumping and cry ‘viva’. A ukulele plays jubilantly to their commemoration of the close of colonialism. Similar ukulele music underlines the warm welcome the women receive in the village. The solidarity perceivable during their first march is also the overriding feature during their return: they are offered refreshments on their way, the family who is living in Diminga’s house can stay with her: the teacher from Bissau helps her work in the fields. However, Diminga’s feelings are mixed. The deep sadness due to the loss of her children frequently overcomes her, making us aware that the feelings about the end of the war are as ambivalent as during the war itself. What is more, the solidarity of the village community does not last long. The historical drought from 1977 puts pressure on the people, as does the difficult construction of a postcolonial society. As David Murphy and Patrick Williams (2007: 141) observe, the drought is both real and symbolic. Gomes uses another journey to stress how fast the common goal of fighting colonialism is being replaced by the selfish interests of social upstarts working for the one party government who wants to take advantage of the society under construction. After returning from the front, Sako suffers from chronic pain in his wounded foot and Diminga decides to take him to a hospital in the capital. Their trip is introduced with images of the drought, accompanied by tambour percussion, a reminder of the call to remain united and resist. Once we see Diminga and Sako on a boat we hear the flute tune again, which proves their commitment to one another and to the young nation’s cause. However, Bissau, the political and social centre to which they are heading, is incapable of healing Sako’s inability to walk straight. The doctor does not know how to cure his pain, while a former comrade who became a bureaucrat is unwilling to help him, pretending not to remember. Diminga does not give up and looks for another comrade in the city. Her ongoing ‘march’ is again underlined by music, namely by the repetition of the song that accompanied



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her departure from the war front: ‘I too bear the memories of the struggle […] will never speak of it/for I too, I too live in hope.’ The hope of the lyrics is not without purpose, given that the second comrade has not yet sold himself to the city’s modern lifestyle and the privileges of the single-party regime. True to the values of comradeship, he takes Sako home. This second homecoming from the inefficient and corrupt capital is again accompanied by images of the drought, and by the tambour percussion – a reminder of the call to fight back as a community – and leads to a dramatic intensification that transforms the community by pointing towards the possibility of a better future. It needs to be constructed without counting on the capital, based on the same simple people who united against colonialism in the beginning of the film. Change is brought about by a dream Diminga has in which images from the drought are superimposed with remembrances of the war that could also be a foreboding of future conflicts. The country actually entered a civil war in 1998 when the one party regime of Nino Vieira was challenged by a military coup after nineteen years of rule. Once the dream – that features the insistent percussion call for action again, overlapped by the sounds of a helicopter reminiscent of the war – is revealed to the other women, the oldest suggests that a ceremony needs to be invoked to summon the ancestors for help. This ceremony starts with a performer drumming on a wooden trunk, followed by shots of boats carrying chanting people to the village. The singing, which we already know from the war scenes as a unifying element, does not represent a return to the origins of genuine African culture. The march has been long – colonialism, the anticolonial war, the construction of a young and already vicious society – and the revitalization of tradition has incorporated these experiences. It therefore centres on the idea of community as the overriding value. As Murphy and Williams observe (2007: 141), ‘the purpose of the gathering is political, not mystical or spiritual’. This is perceivable when Diminga leads the funeral ceremony ‘carga djon gago’ as ‘mother and sister of the freedom fighters’, since it was traditionally held by men of the Papeis e Bijagós so as to find out the reason of a person’s death and to invoke the ancestors, as well as the deity Djon Cago (see Barros and Vaz, 2014).3 They are, however, not the only people organizing or participating. Different ethnic groups are arriving with their specific costumes, rhythms and traditions. But they all join in the same chant and dance, demonstrating their union. As one of the women explains, ‘Gathered here are the ethnic groups our

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struggle is starting to unite and also the trouble-makers seeking to profit from the situation.’ Interestingly, the colonizers are not held responsible for the status quo. On the contrary, Diminga and the two other women who lead the ceremony ask for the disclosure of the enemies within. The women are, decisively, not calling for a revolutionary praxis.4 The aim of the ceremony is political in the sense that it aims to reunite society and to point out those who are upsetting its community: ‘there are those who are for union and those who are against’. Percussion, song and dance are means to incite this unification so that the community can function again, based on solidarity instead of personal interests. Since nature has served as a symbol for the drying out of the anti-colonialist principles and the emptying out of its values, the possibility of constructing a postcolonial identity is confirmed in the last shot in which Diminga and Sako look at the rain that ends the drought. Children are dancing and shouting in the rain to the same happy ukulele tune that we heard before. Thus, the film has a hopeful ending, even though it would be contested ten years later by the outbreak of a civil war. When the Portuguese Film-museum, Cinemateca Portuguesa in Lisbon, first exhibited the film, António Rodrigues (1995) described Those Whom Death Refused as ‘almost a hymn of the official History of the young state, seen from the point of view of the governed and not of the governors’,5 pointing out that it turned historical events into myths of origin. As my analysis has shown, there is in fact, no such thing as the creation of an original myth. Despite the film’s portrayal of the war of independence and the profound problems of the young nation, it focuses on process instead of foundation, on practice instead of theory, on ambivalence instead of certainty. There are peak moments neither for the end of the war, nor for the establishing of the new nation. And the ceremony for the ancestors is far from being a return to a mythological moment. Time, people and nature are in flux. The constant use of percussion, which opens the film and is repeatedly employed whenever the march needs to continue, and during the ceremony at the end, expresses most clearly that it is necessary to keep on adapting, to reinvent tradition, in order to deal with the changes that characterize nature and human life. The soundtrack is a way to express this heterogeneity – as for example with the flute tune or the melancholic songs – as well as the double nature of the war and of postcolonialism. Its main feature is, indeed, that of expressing community, its liberating but also painful connotations.



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Udji Azui de Yonta (The Blue Eyes of Yonta) (1992) Gomes’s following film picks up the question of postcolonial Guinean identity but sets its multi plot-narrative in the capital, Bissau. The war hero, Vicente (António Simão Mendes), his comrade Amrust (Henrique Silva), his comrade’s wife Belante (Bia Gomes) and their children, Yonta (Maysa Marta) and Amílcar (Mohamed Seidi), engage, now in an urban setting, with the conflict between remaining faithful to the ideals of the anticolonial struggle and the pressures of market economy. Music is used very rarely but, when employed, it marks important dramatic points.6 Interestingly, some of the short pieces on the soundtrack are used in the same way as in Those Whom Death Refused, that is, they are leitmotivs associated to certain characters or actions. A slow-paced ballad, ‘Bissau quila muda’ (Bissau changes), composed by Adriano Atchutchi,7 responsible for the entire soundtrack, speaks about the modifications the city is facing and sets a sombre tone at the film’s beginning. It accompanies the point of view shots of a driver coming into Bissau. We will soon find out that they are Vicente’s. The march from Gomes’s first film is thus still going on, but now takes place with the help of the key symbol of modernity: the automobile. Cars are indeed a central motif of the film, used frequently by Vicente or other representatives of the progressing nation and in contrast with the steady walking of the less fortunate population such as Yonta and her brother, Belante and her friend Santa (Jacquelina Camera), or Zé (Pedro Dias), a migrant from the province who first works at the port and studies at night until he becomes Vicente’s driver. Vicente runs a cold storage facility for fish and is torn between becoming a successful businessman and being frustrated by the fact that the progress he fought for during the war is only reaching a few. Yonta, a beautiful young woman, who abandoned her studies early and works as a salesgirl in a shop, represents the desire for material wellbeing. The world of modern consumer goods is also identified with the joyful and entertaining music at the discotheque Tropicana where she and other youngsters spend their Saturday nights. Having trouble accepting the modern lifestyle he himself represents, Vicente dislikes the place and does not want to engage in the fancy choreography shared by the crowd when he accompanies Yonta on one occasion. Everybody else engages with the cheerful and fast-paced music in gumbe style, Guinea-Bissau’s famous swift and rhythmically complex dance music.8

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The nightclub gains, effectively, a negative connotation when Mana (Dina Vaz), Yonta’s best friend who is soon to wed a young man working for the government, reads out loud the love letter that Zé wrote to the protagonist. It is a welcome entertainment for the crowd when the power fails once again. Due to his poor schooling, Zé copied a Swedish poem that glorifies a girl’s blue eyes. The misplacement of European beauty standards is perceived as hilarious, even though the joke hurts the feelings of the writer. It is another way of showing the difficulties in integrating the traditions of the past, as well as the idea of community and equality from the war. There are no easy answers and the film offers diverse solutions. Festivities are a comforting possibility to live traditional customs. Mana’s wedding ceremony occurs therefore twice, being the first a joyful traditional ceremony whose anachronism – the dominant role of the husband – is being mocked by Yonta and other young people; the second is a Western civil ceremony with an ambivalent reception at a hotel, a topic to which I will return. Vicente is the character that struggles most with the incorporation of the ancestors he worships, the values of the anticolonial struggle and his role as a capitalist patron. He is visited by Nando (Adão Malan Nanque), a comrade from the war, who, after sleeping a night at Vicente’s middle-class home, turns his back on modern lifestyle and returns to the roads that he has been roaming ever since the war ended. In two earlier scenes, he approached the city to the percussion music from Gomes’s earlier film. In a self-referential comment, Gomes distances himself from the march through the country and shows that even the percussion has become obsolete since it is not capable of creating union in a modern city. In order to underline the necessity to move on, we then see Vicente’s despair in a dance with a sculpture that symbolizes his ancestors and traditional culture to the same percussion music on the balcony of his house. He asks them to liberate him from the past, while vultures are flying over his head – a symbol used earlier in an eviction scene where the foreboders of death were reinterpreted as premonition of a new beginning. Since his dance is only the performance of an individual, it does not set Vicente free.9 This becomes clear when Yonta appears at his house and brings about a confrontation. She calls him childish after being accused of being a superficial materialist. Since Yonta is obviously attracted to him, this implies as much a moment of growth for her, as it might be a chance for him to realize that he will have to accept modern life’s contradictions. As it is his last scene in the film, his fate remains open-ended.



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Yonta clearly recognizes the necessity to re-evaluate and renegotiate the country’s identity. The paradoxes are apparent not only in the relationships between Yonta and Vicente, but also between her and Zé; especially when he asks for the love letter back at the fancy wedding and she realizes that she behaved insensitively and arrogantly. What is more, a similar poem is recited at Mana’s reception in occidental style after the civil ceremony. Instead of being laughed at, it has now become a status symbol. Given this acceptance of the odd replacement of African ideas on culture for European ones, the party has a surreal feel to it that expresses the effects of a growing alienation from autochthonous culture, standing in sharp contrast to the traditional festivities accompanied by music and dancing earlier in the film. Only when the children and Yonta awaken the next morning around the hotel pool where the festivities took place does the joyful rhythm of Guinean music return. The children and Yonta dance together, as an expression and a celebration of their community. Resistance to the new and westernized values is most strongly demonstrated by the children. This occurs not only in the last shot, but, more poignantly, when Amílcar and his friends return the furniture to Santa’s house from which she had been evicted. This is also one of the few moments of the film in which cheerful Guinean music is played. Yonta thus demonstrates that it is neither desirable nor possible to fully assume a Western lifestyle, but that children and young people who are keen on its commodities and status symbols are capable of constructing a proper identity in which traditional African values, respect for their own society and the memory of the anticolonial past are integrated. The soundtrack attests to this capacity, especially at the closure of the film when the speedy percussion piece to which Yonta and the children dance to a more modern rhythm, however, reminiscent of the slower percussion music associated with the war heroes Nando and Vicente and their ideal of community.

Po di Sangui (Tree of Blood) (1996) Flora Gomes’s following film, Tree of Blood (1996), abandons the anticolonial context and focuses, more generally, on the negative effects of Western technology on African identity. They are caused by white-collar workers from Bissau who want to set up a lucrative wood trade. As Murphy and Williams (2007: 142) remark, the film is ‘simultaneously more modern – in terms,

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particularly, of higher cinematic production values – and more traditional (the film is set in a deliberately allegorically stylized African village)’. The film develops a poetic imaginary that results from references to African traditions, their symbolism and magical beliefs. In order to stress this, it is from the start associated with traditional cultural practices, especially oral storytelling. Accordingly, the narrative content of the film is conveyed as a story to a group of children by Antonia (Bia Gomes), and, as the first shots eloquently demonstrate, immediately related to other artisan activities, namely weaving and its symbolic meaning of interlacing the destiny of a people. The soundtrack, composed by Pablo Cueco, is again sparse and consists of some flute, percussion or akonting (folk lute) tunes and singing. It is part of a wide range of symbolic expressions such as sculpting, the already mentioned storytelling and weaving, as well as dance and painting. It is not by chance that the ending of the film again takes the shape of a tale conveyed by a child, that resumes the film’s story by describing a mural painting whose last image, in which she participates as its painter, expresses the desire for a better future. The story told by Antonia sets off at the moment in which the harmonious life of the village Amanha Lundja, Creole for ‘Tomorrow Faraway’, starts getting out of order. Dou (Ramiro Naka), who left this idyllic place probably to live in the city, returns, only to find his twin brother Hami is dead. Whenever a child is born in this tabanka (village), a tree is planted. Strangely, however, the tree of Dou died as well, indicating changes in the community that, initially, have no explanation. Later in the film, his mother declares that she was not willing to sacrifice one of the twins, as custom would demand, and this might be yet another explanation for the village getting out of kilter. The villagers live together with their sorcerer Calacaladou (Adama Kouyaté) in what is characterized as a world with magical beliefs and powers. Shortly after Dou’s arrival, a fire breaks out – an indication of a lingering threat – and only the sorcerer is capable of containing it. Representing traditional knowledge but also supernatural capacities, the sorcerer will sacrifice himself once modernity, conveyed by the sound of chainsaws, is used to reveal the outbreak of violence against the communal life that results from the neoliberal interest in wood trade. Consequently, Calacaladou, whose name means ‘silent silent’, will ask the villagers to leave, staying behind by himself to defend, unsuccessfully, the values of traditional Africa. The sorcerer is reference and guidance until he asks Dou to assume the lead and take the people out of the village. Saly (Edna Evora) is one of the villagers



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he tries to counsel. While waiting for Dou, with whom she is in love, she has begun to imagine that the sun is her lover. The first use of music is related to her character and passion, a few notes played by a flute that are reminiscent of the use of the instrument as an ambivalent signifier of romance in Those Whom Death Refused. Here the sound is sharp as the hot sunlight, which, according to Calacaladou can burn when it is asked to be in the wrong place. The relation with the sun is not by chance; the villagers are considered its children. However, there are obvious limits to their mythological connection, as the breakout of the fire demonstrated. The fact that Saly is an outsider but also of central importance – she will become the mother of Dou’s baby, a symbol for the future of the village – becomes clear when the girls who are washing clothes chant that the ‘birds’, that is Dou, have returned. Songs equally accompany Dou’s reintegration into the community. He first sings to his dead tree, asking for an answer about its death. Then a song of his niece, who treats him as her father, makes him get closer to her and his sister-in-law. Singing is a means of communal integration that stands in sharp contrast to technically produced music, which has a negative connotation. Dou brought with him a portable radio. A villager switches it on twice in order to listen to modern dance music but Dou turns it off quickly. It is only used to listen to a news-broadcast once the community has left the village. Its information value is, nonetheless, also restricted, since the broadcast is of bad quality and consists of disconnected phrases. Furthermore, it is barely audible once they are in the desert to which Dou takes them. Dou’s reintegration into the community and the beginning of his leadership actually takes place when he finishes the wooden house that his brother Hami started. Even though an impressive construction with a beautifully crafted door in shape of a turtle, it is ambivalent in meaning. We will later learn that the reason for Hami’s death, which Dou tries to find out, is somehow related to the sacrilege he committed by participating in the wood business. As a result, the conclusion of the wooden house triggers off two events. First, a dreamlike scene about the future in which the central women of Dou’s life – Saly, his brother’s widow, Antonia – appear with naked breasts painted with clay. They deliver to him a vessel that represents a newborn, while his mother is screaming as though in labour. The scene points towards the cycle of life and it is accompanied by the sounds of traditional instruments such as horn and lute. Even though indicating birth and the continuation of the village, the wooden house also attracts the

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interest of the men from Bissau. The theft of the turtle-shaped door signals that traditional craft is producing valuable objects and that traditional culture is turning into a target of commerce, just as the trees are being stripped bare of their symbolic meaning by becoming a commodity. The stealing of the turtle-shaped door has yet another meaning. After Dou’s vision the villagers come together in order to commemorate the yearly treeplanting ceremony, referred to as a baptism. The ceremony begins with a song, performed by a young woman, and is reminiscent of the final ceremony in Those Whom Death Refused. Her song tells the mythical story of the genesis of the village by simultaneously pointing towards its future. Moreover, it explains the symbolism of the turtles with which the villagers are associated. The turtles are, in fact, the villagers, while the wood traders are spiders: ‘Where did the turtles of Tomorrow Faraway go when the Leading Spiders betrayed them/They spoke of things that do not exist anymore/The turtles did not find the way home/They talked a lot that night/ […]’. The entire village sings the last two lines, clapping and dancing, expressing their unity in this way. But the ceremony of tree planting cannot take place because Calacaladou does not appear. He remains in his hut where he foresees the arrival of the wood cutters, which occurs in due course, expressed with the sound of chainsaws. They are first heard by the sorcerer, and then invade the entire village that starts panicking. Instead of engaging in the tree-planting ritual, Antonia starts to play percussion on the floor. She does not try to hold the community together but conveys with her drumming that ‘men have become mad and deaf ’. It is an alarm but remains without effect. Other sounds, made by a xylophone and a lute, invade the space and orchestrate a sombre polyphonic music that audibly communicates the devastation that begins to take place in form of a drought (reminiscent of the drought as symbolic stagnation in Those Whom Death Refused). Dou is chosen to lead the villagers who need to search for a new place after a second betrayal. The allegory of the march is once more invoked by Gomes. In this film, however, it is related to the idea of giving up a traditional lifestyle. Calacaladou therefore remains. His role as leader within a traditional Africa has been fulfilled. The magical world, in which a sorcerer can resolve the problems, is left behind and a new way of living has to be found. Consequently, the music that accompanies the villagers leaving their home is not sad but joyous, introducing modern Western instruments, namely a jazzy sounding trumpet and a violin.



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The long voyage takes the villagers through a desert. It is as an even stronger metaphor of human relationships built on exploration and destruction of nature than the drought. There is death and despair, and the return becomes only possible after two symbolic incidents: first the encounter with another group of villagers on a quest for a better life, and, second, when Dou and Saly’s son is born – as foreseen in the prophetic scene. The encounter with the other community is celebrated with the same joyful music of the departure from Tomorrow Faraway. They offer water, and their sharing and sense of community changes Dou. He goes to find Saly who is still in love with the sun. His approaching her equally symbolizes a necessary communion: only when everybody is able to engage with the other, either individually or as a group, can a new foundation be built on which a common future may be constructed. As a result, Dou can lead the villagers home. Their march is accompanied by a new song, which he sings in a duet with his sister-in-law. It tells their tale and expresses the newfound equilibrium and union between ‘the turtles’ and ‘the spiders’. It is storytelling in the form of a ballad: ‘The turtles came from fifty-two different points of the earth/ Each one bears the marks of its tribe/ The spiders accompanied them, since they wanted to see the world/ The price paid by them is the knitting of a web, which indicates the way/ […].’ All the villagers sing the last lines on their union and their different ways of looking at the world together: ‘Until the day when the turtles and the spiders finally arrive/ The union holds on/ The turtles talk endlessly/ They do not agree about the way the world is made/ […].’ When they reach the village, it has been devastated. To the sound of a traditional berimbau, the villagers roam through it and find Calacaladou dead. But Dou’s little niece also encounters a mural painting that tells their story in images. She tells it to her people while we hear the sound of birds singing that we also heard at the beginning of the film. When she smiles into the camera, hope can be sensed.10 Obviously, there are no easy answers on how to resolve the conflict between tradition and modernity, modern Western technology and ancestral knowledge. The march will go on and songs, paintings and films will tell of the intent of the ‘turtles’ to retain their spirit of community.

Nha Fala (My Voice) (2002) Gomes’s last feature film from 2002, which was not produced in the country due to the political uproars in 1998,11 takes a completely different approach to the question of tradition and modernity, as well as to the role of music. Filmed

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in Cape Verde, the colourful and stylized musical extends Yonta’s optimism by adding a more marketable perspective to identity, comparable to other Luso-African productions12 on cultural synthesis. In fact, the film encounters in Western culture and technology the chance to overcome an obsolete African superstition and to construct a new Afro-European identity. Nonetheless, it insists in being daring for a better life and future. Using one of cinema’s most popular genres, the musical, My Voice is visibly directed towards a Western audience. The main character, beautiful Vita (Fatou N’Diaye), leaves Guinea-Bissau to study in France. Before her departure, she says farewell to her family and friends. Musical numbers – composed by the famous Cameroon musician Manu Dibango – dramatize the wide range of contemporary social problems that Guinea-Bissau is facing: the difficulty in dealing with the memory of the heroic fight for independence, corruption, the coexistence of Animism and Catholicism, and the unemployment among young people with university degrees. While walking the streets, Vita is followed by her former boyfriend Yano (Ângelo Torres), who has become a corrupt merchant. He will nevertheless, redeem himself at the end of the film when he renounces his desire to become rich and powerful and buys a school. Just like in Yonta, society seems incapable of keeping track with the ideals of the anticolonial fight. They are remembered with a light-hearted running gag in which two characters try to find a place for the statue of Amílcar Cabral, which grows each time it is moved around. In this political, postcolonial situation, Vita’s route of migration seems to be the only escape, a suggestion affirmed in the course of the film. Once in Paris she falls in love with the young music producer Pierre (Jean-Christophe Dollé) and enchants all the people she comes across because of her solidarity and friendly nature. Not only does she have a positive influence on her surroundings, but it changes her as well. By singing one of her boyfriend’s compositions, a sugary pop song, she leaves behind an old family superstition that says that women of her family died when they sang. What follows is a fairy tale: her first appearance at Pierre’s studio impresses everybody and her sugary song turns into a major hit. With the purpose of dealing with the offence to her ancestors, and after having become a European music star, she returns with her boyfriend and band to her hometown. By staging her own funeral and remaining alive, she simultaneously respects and transgresses her mother’s (Bia Gomes) belief that she would die if she sang. In tune with the genre, the film presents a vibrant and



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utopian Africa that embraces Western culture and technology without hesitations. The resulting hybrid identity however is restricted to stardom. Nonetheless, the lyrics of the last song preserve Gomes’s theme of trying to construct a better life by daring: What must you do when someone blocks your path? Dare! What must you do to move ahead? Dare! When no one listens to you, when you’re just a candle in the night, what must you do? Dare, Dare! When you are poorer in the morning than at night, Dare!

The music is contagious and, accordingly, first sung by Vita and then joined in by her mother who thus embraces her daughter’s daring. In contrast to Flora Gomes’s previous films, Vita needed to incorporate a European experience to be empowered. Unfortunately, her dependence on Europe is mirrored in the concession the film makes in terms of plot and aesthetics. However, it still preserves the filmmaker’s defiant outlook on identity construction, which, nonetheless, was much denser and insightful in his earlier productions.

Flora Gomes and ‘minor cinema’ Let me now return to Deleuze’s idea of ‘minor cinema’ and his definition of political cinema in order to sketch a conclusion about Gomes’s films with regard to the importance of his employment of music and its relation to identity construction. David Rodowick (1997) notes that Deleuze’s notion stems from examples by hybrid or postcolonial filmmakers. He underlines the fact that Deleuze drew on Carlo Bene’s comment of the ‘missing people’ in order to speak of the necessity of forging a new collectivity. The author explains the impact of this idea of a collectivity in the making and contrasts it with classical and modern cinema: One of the great values of modern political cinema is its potential for restoring this belief [in a preexisting collective identity] in a way entirely different from that of the classical period. […] The problem is to affirm a people in their collective becoming, to define their potential or their affirmative will to power. This means acknowledging first that a group is actual before it becomes real, that is, before it finds the means to express itself collectively. Second, this

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becoming must not be understood as an ideal image of unity that already exists and must only be awakened into self-consciousness. Rather, it is a concept, both virtual and real, on the basis of which a people can invent themselves. This is an historical image that invents a future by creatively transforming occluded elements of the past. ‘In short’, Deleuze argues, ‘if there were a modern political cinema, it would be on this basis: the people no longer exist, or not yet … the people are missing. (Rodowick, 1997: n.p.)

It is my contention that the metaphor of the march and the hope related to children, the key leitmotifs in Gomes’s films, are certainly his way of working on this idea of a collectivity in the making that is unfinished and always openended. As I have shown, music is an important tool to call a group together for a momentary construction of this collectivity, especially when it is used to gather the ‘missing people’ – in the sense of forming a group that can act, either against colonialism or to found a new country. What is more, be it through music or in songs, there is generally a non-essentialist gesture in Gomes’s films that defines life and identity as non-fixed and ambivalent. In Those Whom Death Refused the fight for and the achievement of independence are seen ambivalently. Different musical instruments are used in order to make this perceptible, such as the flute that underlines the relation between the personal and the political, or the percussion that calls for persistence and solidarity but also for war. In terms of narrative, there is also no clear ending or beginning, no rite of passage that would mark a new identity or the sudden appearance of a national collectivity. The final ceremony, which calls the ‘missing people’ with percussion, is a momentary reunion and, factually, a speech act in that it is capable of creating a sense of union. But the ceremony does not want to consolidate a specific identity. It is no guarantee or expression of national identity. It is transitory and will need to be repeated in order to confirm again the partnership between the people. Music seems less important in Yonta. Set in the postcolonial capital Bissau it uses again percussion music, but more modern, to unite the film’s heroine with her brother and other children so as to point to a future identity. At the end of the film, it is the traditional rhythms that make Yonta and the children dance. They are the still missing people that have proved that they can differentiate between empty collectivity with entertainment purposes (the dance scene in the Tropicana) and solidarity (in the scene of civic disobedience of the children). Again, nothing is fixed, but communion occurs and it expresses the preservation of solidarity that might bring about a better future.



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Even though the village in Tree of Blood lives together in communal harmony, they need a symbolic rite of passage, the march through the desert, in order to regain their collectivity. Initially, music functions less as a speech act than as an illustration of moods. Nonetheless, when the villagers leave the town, it serves again as a call that unites. It only becomes a speech act when it assumes a narrative function and tells the tale of the community. As such, it is embedded in other cultural practices – above all storytelling – that are not commodities but have a vital purpose: to hold the people together. The film therefore opens and ends with orality. And two songs – one at the baptism, the other one on the way home – aim to affirm the people in their desire to reinvent their communal spirit. In My Voice music seems to lose this quality as speech act. Songs are used to indicate aspects of Guinean or French society or of the characters. This changes only when Vita starts to sing and music turns into an individual tool of empowerment. Collectivity is not an issue until the last sequence when a song reassumes the dimension music had since Gomes’s first film: a means to create community, or, as Deleuze would say, make the people exist in a speech act. This speech act includes all the people present, beyond ethnic, regional or national boundaries, aiming for a community of a transnational people. As such, the soundtrack is certainly more utopian but also less credible in its political implications than in Gomes’s previous, more inspiring films.

Notes 1 Murphy and Williams discuss his films mainly with regard to the conflict between tradition and modernity, Arenas within the context of postcolonial Africa, and Ferreira with regard to the coproduction mode. 2 Cabral (1979: 18–19) challenged Portugal’s so called ‘historical right to be in Africa’ by arguing that it concealed the realities and results of colonialism. The film avoids open political discourse in its representation of the war. While Cabral made it quite clear that Portugal was not at all superior to its African colonies: ‘this [civilizing] process is being carried out by an underdeveloped country, with a lower national income than, for example, Ghana, and which has not as yet been able to solve its own problems’ (Cabral, 1979: 18–19). 3 It is worth noting that the Balanta people are organized by the principle of egalitarianism and that therefore the Portuguese had difficulties in governing them.

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Representing 30 per cent of the population (next to Fula – 20 per cent, Manjack – 14 per cent, Mandinka – 13 per cent and Papel 7 per cent), they enlisted strongly in the PAIGC. Despite their importance in the struggle, they were excluded from participation in the new government. 4 Fernando Arenas (2011: 121) agrees with Manthia Diawara’s reading of the ceremony as revolutionary. However, the entire film is based on the intrinsic relationship between personal story – the couple – and the construction of the nation. Once independence is achieved, it is this goal that remains and is invoked during the festivity. 5 Translations from the original in Portuguese by the author. 6 Arenas (2011: 122) speaks of the ‘lively music soundtrack’ but this is only true for the two scenes at the discotheque Tropicana. 7 Adriano Atchutchi was the original lead and composer of the band Super Mama Djombo that later released an album entitled ‘Yonta’ with all the songs on the film’s soundtrack. The choice of the musician is not by chance. Atchutchi formed the band during the 1960s in a boy scout camp, using the name of a spirit, which fighters would appeal to during the war of independence. In fact, ‘Mortu Nega’ is a song from 1977 from the band that inspired Flora Gomes’s first film. 8 The songs such as ‘Noiba noba’ or ‘Vicente da Silva’, which make reference to the characters Mana and Vicente, are compositions by Super Mama Djombo. 9 Arenas’ (2011: 122) reading of the scene differs from mine when he says that ‘the vulture scene may refer to the Duga, or the vulture song/dance honoring celebrated heroes in the oral tradition […] but it is suggestive of a predatory quality in Vicente’s newly found place in postcolonial and post-Marxist Guinea-Bissau’. 10 Murphy and Williams (2007: 146) speak of a ‘quietly optimistic ending’. 11 Due to the political and military conflict on 7 June 1998, the film was entirely shot in Cape Verde and did not receive any funding from Guinea Bissau. 12 See Ferreira (2012).

References Arenas, Fernando (2011) Lusophone Africa: Beyond Independence. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Barros, Miguel and Mónica Vaz (2014) ‘(Re)presentações sobre as questões da finitude: morte morrida ou morte vivida?’ in I Congresso Cabo Verdiano de Ciências Sociais: Novas Leituras, Novas Sociabilidades em Contexto de Incertezas: Universidade de Santiago. Realizado em 5, 6 e7 de Novembro.



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Cabral, Amílcar (1979) Unity and Struggle – Speeches and Writings. New York and London: Monthly Review Press. Deleuze, Gilles (1989) Cinema 2. The Time Image. London: The Athlone Press. Ferreira, Carolin Overhoff (2012) Identity and Difference – Postcoloniality and Transnationality in Lusophone Films. Berlin and London: Lit Verlag. Murphy, David and Patrick Williams (2007) Postcolonial African Cinema: Ten Directors. Manchester: University of Manchester Press. Rodowick, David (1997) ‘Fabulation: Towards a Minor Cinema’. Available online: http://www.zonecast.eu/immedia/sehen/ds03rod.htm [accessed 12 October 2013]. Rodrigues, António (1995) ‘Mortu Nega’, Folhas da Cinemateca Portuguesa, no. 45.

Index The letter f following an entry denotes a figure The letter t following an entry denotes a table 79 Primaveras (Álvarez) 14–15 ‘A Felicidade’ (Felicity) (Bonfá, Luís/ Jobim, Tom/Moraes, Vinícius de) 50, 55, 58–60, 62 Abril de Viet Nam en el año del gato (Álvarez) 14 Acosta, Leonardo 15 Adorno, Theodor 10, 11 Africa 51, 65, 193–4 see also Benin; Guinea-Bissau; Nigeria African Americans 94–6 film and 191, 194–5 songs and 204–12 Afro-Cuban music 16–18, 22 ‘Agbonmahiren’ (song) 201, 203, 205 ‘Agidigbo’ (thumb piano) 207, 209 Ahmed, Sara: ‘Home and Away: Narratives of Migration and Estrangement’ 94, 98, 106, 107 Aizen Katsura (Nomura Hiromasa) 103 Alea, Tomás Gutiérrez Fresa y chocolate 19 Guantanamera 18, 19–21 Memorias del subdesarollo 14 muerte de un burócrata, La 14 última cena, La 14 ‘Viewer’s Dialectic, The’ 6–7 Alemán, Miguel 29 Álvarez, Santiago 10, 14, 22 79 Primaveras 14–15 Despegue a las 18:00 14 Guerra olvidada, La 14 Hanoi, martes 13 14 Now 14 primer delegado, El 14 Y el suelo fue tomado por asalto 14 American culture 5–7 see also Hollywood cinema

American music 6–7, 14–15 Americana 6 animation 153–4 Animation Australia 153 appropriation 14, 94, 117 Arirang (Na Woon-gyu) 122–3, 130 Arnheim, Rudolph 85 ‘Arrival, The’ (Tan, Shaun) 155 art 85 Benin and 196–7 Daoism and 83–4 Gesamtkunstwerk 86 hybridity and 86 Romantic 28–9, 37–8 total 74 translations and 86 Atchutchi, Adriano 225 Auckland, New Zealand 172, 175–6, 178, 180, 184 aural dialectics 7, 13–15 Australia animated film and 153–4 film and 155–7 Bachelard, Gaston 81–2, 83 Baker, Leo 156 Bakhtin, Mikhail 36 Bandstand (TV show) 153 Barrio Cuba (Solás) 19 ‘Bathe in the River’ (McGlashan, Don) 176, 178, 181 batucada 50, 57 Bay of Pigs invasion 15 Beatles, the 5, 15, 16 Benin 196 see also Benin video-film art forms 196–7 dances 209 greeting patterns 204 musical instruments 209

240 Index storytelling 207 tonal dialect 207 tradition 211–12 Benin video-film 192, 193, 197–201, 210–11 inconsistencies in 211–12 music and 199, 201–12 proverbs and 202–4 repetition and 209–10 singing styles and 204–6 Biakolo, Emevwo 193–4 Bill Haley and the Comets: ‘Rock Around the Clock’ 6 biopics 26, 27, 31, 33, 38 American cinema and 33, 38 European cinema 38 Rosas, Juventino 25–6, 28–41 ‘Bissau quila muda’ (ballad) 225 Black Balloon, The (Down, Elissa) 157 Black Orpheus (Camus, Marcel) 2, 45–9, 63f Brazilian culture and 57, 59, 64 charm of 48–9 class and 57–9, 64 criticism of 47–8 samba/bossa nova and 49, 50, 54–66 soundtrack 49–50, 54–63, 56f Blackboards (Makhmalbaf, Samira) 134 Blinky Bill (Gross, Yoram) 153 Bliss (Samuel, Fiona) 179 Bonfá, Luís ‘A Felicidade’ (Felicity) 50, 55, 58–60, 62 ‘Samba De Orfeu’ (Orpheus’s Samba) 45, 50, 55, 57, 58–9, 60–1, 62 ‘Manhã de Carnival’ (Carnival Morning) 55–7, 56f Book of Changes (I Ching) 83 borders 134–5, 140–1, 143–4 bossa nova 45, 49, 50–1, 52, 54–63, 65 Bourdaghs, Michael 93, 94–5 ‘Japan’s Orient in Song and Dance’ 94 bowties 39 Brazil 66 n.2 see also Black Orpheus carnival and 49, 60, 61–2, 65 cinema and 45 class and 50–1, 60 cultural cannibalism and 64, 65

culture and 57, 59, 64 depictions of 47–8 national identity and 45–6, 49, 63, 64 popular music and 51 Brouwer, Leo 12–15 Bryant, Tom 156 Buena Vista Social Club (Cooder, Ry) (album) 21 Buena Vista Social Club (Wenders, Wim) (film) 21 Cabral, Amílcar 219–21, 232 Revolution in Guinea 219 call and response pattern songs 205–6 calligraphy 82 Camus, Marcel 66 n.2 Orfeu Megro (Black Orpheus) see Black Orpheus ‘Canto de Amor’ (Castro, Ricardo) 34 Cárdenas, Lázaro 29 Cardillo, Salvatore: ‘Core ‘ngrato’ 178, 184 ‘Carmen’ (Rosas, Juventino) 27 carnival 46–9, 60, 61–2, 65 Castro, Fidel 16, 17 Castro, Ricardo 34 ‘Canto de Amor’ 34 Catholicism 36–7, 232 Cecilia (Solás) 14 Celtic music 96 censorship 93 Japan and 99–100, 101, 103, 104, 105 Chanan, Michael 11–12, 14, 16, 22 ‘Chega de Saudade’ (‘Enough Missing Her’) (Jobim, Tom) 53, 54 Chikagorō, Ogawa 103, 104 China calligraphy and 82 censorship and 99 clothing and 97 hybridity of music and 71–3 Japan–China binary 94–5 Japanese imperialism and 92, 108 martial arts films 75, 76 see also Hero national identity 71, 73, 78, 81, 82–3 New Music movement 73 painting and 82, 84 philosophy and 74, 82, 83–4 water and 74–5, 77, 81–2, 81f, 84

Index China melody 3, 91 see also continental melody, the Chinese chess 79, 81, 83–5, 87 n.6 Chinese composers 72–3 Cho, Hae Joang 120–1 Choi, Chungmoo 122, 127–8 chronotope, the 36 Cinema 2: The Time Image (Deleuze, Gilles) 7–8 civil rights movement 14 class 1, 38–9, 50–1, 52–4, 59, 60, 65, 101, 103 classical music 1, 13, 15, 50, 74, 96 elitism and 38 Mexico 25–8, 30–1, 36–41 New Zealand and 172, 177–9, 182, 184–6 CODESRIA (Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa) 192 Coffea Arábiga (Landrián) 16 Colina, Enrique 11 collectivity 119, 220, 233–5 colonialism 92, 93–4, 182 see also mimicry Deleuze, Gilles and 26, 41 Guinea-Bassau and 218–19, 221–4, 234–5 Korea and 126 Nigeria and 194 Comedia Ranchera 25, 29 complementary duets 204–5, 212 continental melody, the 91–7, 99–101, 107–9 Bourdaghs, Michael and 93, 94–5 capitalism and 97 censorship and 93 cultural oppression theory and 93, 99–104, 108 cultural transgression theory and 93, 94, 95 military, and the 92, 93 race and 94–5 continental trilogy (films) 91–2 Cooder, Ry 21 Buena Vista Social Club 21 Cordiferro, Riccardo: ‘Core ‘ngrato’ 178, 184

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‘Core ‘ngrato’ (Cardillo, Salvatore/ Cordiferro, Riccardo) 178, 184 Coyle, Rebecca 157 Cuba Afro-Cuban music and 16–18, 22 American culture and 5–6, 7, 11, 14–15 critique and 16 economy and 18–19, 20, 21 guajira-son (music) and 20 ICAIC (Instituto Cubano del Arte y la Industria Cinematográficos) see ICAIC musical genres and 13, 15 national film and 5–7, 8, 10–12, 14, 16, 18–19 post-revolutionary 5, 7, 8–18 race and 17 religion and 18 revolutionary soundtracks and 13–15 Santería and 17 son (music) and 12, 18, 21 Special Period 8, 18–21 tourism and 18, 20–1 Cuba Baila (Espinosa) 11–12 cultural difference 91–4, 120, 154, 192, 194 cultural oppression theory 93, 99–104 108, 126–7 Daoism 82, 83–4 Daozi, Wu 84 Dean Spanley (Fraser, Toa) 179, 185 Death and Fire: Dialogue with Paul Klee (Dun, Tan) 74 Deleuze, Gilles 2, 26, 41, 45, 71, 83, 85–6, 93, 98, 106, 116–17, 121, 133, 138–40, 144–5, 150, 171, 174–5, 193–5, 218, 233–5 Cinema 2: The Time Image 7–8 Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature 100–1 Despegue a las 18:00 (Álvarez) 14 dialectics 5, 13, 15, 39 music and 7, 13–15 Díaz, José Fernández: Guantanamera 19–21 Díaz, Porfirio 26–7 Dick, Bernard 197–9

242 Index Diegues, Carlos 48 Orfeu 48 ‘Diz Que Fui Por Aí’ (‘Say That I Went There’) (Keti, Zé) 52 Doane, Mary Anne 9 documentary style 144–5 Dot and the Kangaroo (Gross, Yoram) 153 ‘Dōtonbori Kōshinkyoku’ (‘Dōtonbori march’) (song) 102 Down, Elissa: Black Balloon, The 157 dreams 53, 197, 198 Dunedin, New Zealand 172–3 Earth Concerto for stone and ceramic percussion and orchestra (Dun, Tan) 74 ‘Eeyo’ (song) 200, 206, 207, 209–10 Efe Baba (Peaceman, Nosa Ada) 192, 199, 200, 201f, 202, 203, 204, 206, 207, 209–10, 211 Eight Memories in Watercolour (Dun, Tan) 74 ‘Elephant Celebes’ (Ernst, Max) 155, 168 Elliot, Adam 153–4 Harvey Crumpet 153 Lost Thing, The see Lost Thing, The emotion, melodrama and 9, 11 En Un Barrio Viejo/In an Old Neighbourhood (Landrián) 16–18 enka 96 Enogieru, Osaradion: Ozedu 199–200 Ernst, Max: ‘Elephant Celebes’ 155, 168 Espinosa, Julio García 11 European culture 26–7, 38, 40–1, 46–7, 65, 73, 96, 182, 193, 196, 226–7, 232–3 Eurydice 46–7, 50, 55–9, 61–4 ‘Evbaekhin’ (song) 210 exotic 2, 47, 93–6, 98, 127; exoticism 48; exoticness 92 favelados (shantytown dwellers) 45, 47 favelas (shantytowns) 47–8, 51, 57, 59–60, 63–5 Fern Gully (Kroyer, Bill) 153 FESPCA (Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou) 192 Fiji 177–8, 180–2 see also Fijian; New Zealand; No. 2

Fijians 172, 176, 184, 176 film animation 153, 154, 155–6, 168 paradigmatic analysis and 199, 200 sub-texts and 197–9, 201, 211 see also paradigmatic analysis suture, concept of 107, 108 syntagmatic analysis and 199 texts and 146, 198 see also syntagmatic analysis film music immateriality and 9–10 overlooking 8–9 studying 9–10 flow, flowing 75, 77, 80–4, 106, 120, 154, 181–2, 186, 195 Flying Nun record label 172–3 ‘Fool on the Hill, The’ (Beatles) 16 Fraser, Toa 172, 180, 185 Dean Spanley 179, 185 No. 2 see No. 2 Frausto, Jesús Rodríguez 41 n.1 Fresa y chocolate (Alea) 19 ‘Front Lawn, The’ project 183 Gamboa, Federico 37 Santa 34 gender 37–9, 127–8, 130 see also women Gesamtkunstwerk 86 GESI (Grupo de Experimentación Sonora de ICAIC) 12–13, 14, 15–16 Ghobadi, Bahman 3, 133–4 borders and 134–5, 143–4, 147 documentary style of 133, 135, 138, 144–5 Half-Moon 133, 135, 136, 137f, 137–8, 139–40, 141–4, 145–6, 147–8, 149, 150 marginalization and 139, 140–1, 143, 146, 149 Marooned in Iraq 135–6, 137–8, 139–40, 141–2, 143, 144, 145–7, 149 movement and 133–4, 136, 143–4, 147, music and 135, 137–8, 139–40, 144, 145–50 No One Knows About Persian Cats 135, 136–8, 139–40, 142–3, 144, 145–6, 147, 148–9, 148f, 150

Index

243

Time for Drunken Horses, A 134 women and 142, 146–7 Giral, Sergio: Otro Francisco, El 14 Girón, Adolfo 25, 28 globalization 51, 85, 211 Gomes, Florentino (Flora) 217, 233–5 Mortu Nega (Those Whom Death Refused) 217, 218–24, 234 Nha Fala (My Voice) 218, 231–3, 235 Po di Sangui (Tree of Blood) 218, 227–31, 235 Udji Azui de Yonta (The Blue Eyes of Yonta) 217–18, 225–7, 234 Gordine, Sacha 48, 49 Great Asia Co-prosperity Sphere 95 Gross, Yoram 153 Blinky Bill 153 Dot and the Kangaroo 153 Grupo de Experimentación Sonora de ICAIC (GESI) 12–13, 14, 15–16 guajira-son (music) 20 Guantanamera (Alea) 18, 19–21 Guantanamera (Díaz, José Fernández) 19–21 Guattari, Félix 2, 138 Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature 100–1 Guerra, Ruy 63–4 Guerra olvidada, La (Álvarez) 14 Guinea-Bissau 217, 232 see also Gomes, Flora drought and 222, 223 civil war and 223 colonialism and 218–19, 221, 224 Güney, Yilmaz 141 Herd, The 141 guqin 76, 77, 79, 82–3

Hanoi, martes 13 (Álvarez) 14 Harvey Crumpet (Elliot, Adam/Tan, Shaun) 153 Hattori Ryōichi 91, 96 ‘Separation Blues’ (Wakareno uta) 105–6 ‘Hava Nagila’ 14 Hayward, Jimmy: Horton Hears a Who 155 Hayward, Philip 157 Herd, The (Güney, Yilmaz) 141 Hero (Zhang Yimou) 80f, 81 calligraphy 82 Daoism and 82, 83 Dun, Tan and 72, 76–85 guqin and 82–3 meaning of 86 soundtrack 76, 77t, 79–85 water and 74–5, 77, 81–2, 81f, 84 heterophony 206 Hitoshi, Motoshima 106, 107 Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The (Jackson, Peter) 171 Hollywood cinema 10–11 biopics 33 home, the 106, 107 ‘Home and Away: Narratives of Migration and Estrangement’ (Ahmed, Sara) 107 ‘Home, Land and Sea’ (Trinity Roots) 177, 178 Homeless Angels (Choi In-gyu) 122 Horne, Lena: ‘Now’ 14 Horton Hears a Who (Hayward, Jimmy) 155 Hossein, Alizadeh: ‘Laylahen’ 148 Hume, David 193–4 hybridity 64, 71, 72, 79, 85, 86

Half-Moon (Ghobadi, Bahman) 133, 135, 136, 137f, 137–8, 139–40, 141–4, 145–6, 147–8, 149, 150 Hamako, Watanabe 91–2, 93, 95, 97, 106 ‘Shina no yoru’ (China Nights) 97, 99, 101 ‘Wasurecha iya yo’ (‘Don’t Forget Me’) 99, 101 han (grief, sadness and suffering) 120, 126–31

ICAIC (Instituto Cubano del Arte y la Industria Cinematográficos) 5–6, 12–15, 19 ideology 8, 10–11, 16, 96, 107, 117, 121, 192 see also political ideology ‘If I Go Away to the Sea’ (‘umi yukaba’) (song) 104 Im Kwŏnt’aek 121 p’ansori and 120 Sŏp’yŏnje see Sŏp’yŏnje

244 Index ‘Imade’ (song) 207–8, 210, 211 imitation 84, 93, 94–5, 97 individualism 11 Infante, Pedro 25–6, 29, 31, 34, 36, 38, 40 Instituto Cubano del Arte y la Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC) 5, 6, 12–15, 19 intellectual associations 198 international consumption 2 Iran 3, 134–6, 141–4, 146, 149 music and 137, 140, 145, 147, 148 Iraq 136, 141, 142–3, 145, 147 Japan 3 see also continental melody, the censorship and 99–100, 101, 103, 104, 105 class and 103 clothing and 97 colonialist culture and 91 film and 101–3, 107 imperialism and 92, 96–7 Koga Masao 91, 96 Manchuria and 97–9, 102, 106, 108 mass culture and 93, 97, 101–2 ‘Patriotic March’ campaign 103 popular music and 96, 102, 106 propaganda films and 122 soldiers and 104–5, 107 song contests and 103–4 song titles and 102 ‘total mobilization of the national spirit’ concept and 101, 103, 104 war and 100–5, 108 Western culture and 96 Japan–China binary 94–5 ‘Japan’s Orient in Song and Dance’ (Bourdaghs, Michael) 94 Jobim, Antônio Carlos 47–8 Jobim, Tom 49 ‘A Felicidade’ (Felicity) 55, 58–60, 62 ‘Chega de Saudad’ (‘Enough Missing Her’) 53 ‘Manhã de Carnival’ (Carnival Morning) 55–7, 56f ‘Samba De Orfeu’ (Orpheus’s Samba) 55, 57, 60–1 Joven rebelde, El (Espinosa) 14 Jubilation (choir) 176, 181

Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature (Deleuze, Gilles/Guattari, Félix) 93, 98, 100–1, 174 Kalolo, Bella 176, 181 Kassab, John 156, 157–8, 163, 164–5, 167 Kelly, Victoria 175 Keti, Zé: ‘Diz Que Fui Por Aí’ (‘Say That I Went There’) 52 Kiarostami, Abbas 144 Wind Will Carry Us, The 134 Kim Such’ǒl 117, 123 Kipen, Doron 158 Koga Masao 91, 96 Koga melody 96 kōminka (imperialization) 92, 96 Komota, Nobuo 93, 100 Korea 96, 115–19 see also Sŏp’yŏnje ethnocentric nationalism and 117–18 film industry and 120–1, 123 film music and 121–2 han (grief, sadness and suffering) and 120, 126–7 music and 122 see also p’ansori national culture and 129–31 national identity and 116, 119–20, 122 p’ansori and 115, 118, 122–3 Korean War, the 115–16, 119, 124 Kōsaku, Yamada 103 Kurdish language 134, 141, 145 Kurdistan 134, 136, 147 films and 134–5, 141–2, 143 statelessness 143 Kurds 3, 134, 136, 140–1, 143–6 Landrián, Nicolás Guillén 16, 22 Coffea Arábiga 16 En Un Barrio Viejo/In an Old Neighbourhood 16–18 Last Samurai, The (Zwick, Edward) 171 Lastra, Hugo Barreiro 26, 41 n.1 ‘Laylahen’ (Hossein, Alizadeh) 148 ‘League of Extraordinary Gentleman’ (Moore, Alan/O’Neill, Kevin) 164 León, Carlos 16 Li Sao (‘Encountering Sorrow’) (Dun, Tan) 72, 73 Lied von der Erde, Das (The Song of the Earth) (Mahler, Gustav) 74

Index local identity 171, 173, 185 locality 116, 117, 141, 175, 204, 209–12 Long, David 176, 181 Look Both Ways (Watts, Sarah) 156 Lopes, Nei 51 Lord of the Rings trilogy (Jackson, Peter) 156, 171, 183 Los Contemporáneos 38 Lost Thing, The (Elliot, Adam/Tan, Shaun) (film) 153–4, 155–6 low-tech philosophy of 164, 165 musical sound and 166 narration and 156, 158, 166 non-musical sound and 165 sound team and 156–8, 164, 167 soundtrack 158–67 Steampunk and 163–4, 167 ‘Lost Thing, The’ (Tan, Shaun) (book) 155, 156 love and death theme 47, 48–9, 54, 61–2, 147, 226, 229 McGlashan, Don 171, 172, 175–6, 183, 184 ‘Bathe in the River’ 176, 178 Bliss and 179 classical music and 179 Dean Spanley 179, 185 local contexts and 185 No. 2 see No. 2 ‘The Front Lawn’ project 183 McLuhan, Marshall 10 Mahler, Gustav: Lied von der Erde, Das (The Song of the Earth) 74 Major, Anne Patrick 140–1, 143, 145 major cinema 2, 14, 85, 179, 183, 186 major scales 2, 3, 160–2 Makhmalbaf, Mohsen 144 Makhmalbaf, Samira 144 Blackboards 134 malandro 57, 65, 67 nn. 20–3 Malitsky, Josh 14 Man ban (Dun, Tan) 73 Manchuria 97–9, 102, 106, 108, 119 ‘Manchurian Girl’ 91, 99 ‘Manhã de Carnival’ (Carnival Morning) (Bonfá, Luís/Jobim, Tom) 55–7, 56f

245

Manifesto for a Popular Cinema (Pereira dos Santos, Nelson) 64 Manshū kōshinkyoku 102 Map, The (Dun, Tan) 74–5 Marco Polo and the Red Dragon (Porter, Eric) 153 Marooned in Iraq (Ghobadi, Bahman) 135–6, 137–8, 139–40, 141–2, 143, 144, 145–7, 149 Martí, José 20 martial arts 75–6, 78–80, 85–6 Marsden, John 155 ‘Rabbits, The’ 155 masculinist desire 127–8, 130 mass culture 10–11, 64, 93, 97, 130 Master and the Slave, the 39 Medhurst, Adrian 156, 165 melodrama 9–12, 19, 25, 38, 91, 107–8 melopoeia 58 Memorias del subdesarollo (Alea) 14 meta/commentaries 195 Mexico 25–9, 35 Catholicism and 36–7, 38 classical music and 25–8, 30–1, 36–41 Comedia Ranchera and 25, 29 European influence 27 national cinema and 25, 41 national film industry and 28 national identity and 26, 27, 36, 38, 40 popular music and 28, 38 Porfiriato, the 29–30 Miel para Ochún (Solás) 19 mimicry 92, 99 Minchin, Tim 156, 158 minor cinema 2, 4, 7, 41, 45, 64, 85–6, 106, 117, 121, 133, 135, 138–9, 140–1, 144–5, 171, 174–5, 182, 186, 194, 218, 233 minor literature 100, 106, 138 minor scales 2–3 minstrelsy shows 94–5 Miranda, Carmen 48 Mitchell, Tony 185 Mizoguchi Kenji: Tokyo Kōshinkyoku 102 Monteverdi, Claudio: L’Orfeo 46 Moore, Alan; ‘League of Extraordinary Gentleman’ 164 Moraes, Vinícius de 46–7

246 Index ‘A Felicidade’ (Felicity) 58–60, 62 Orfeu da Conceiçāo 46–7 Mortu Nega (Those Whom Death Refused) (Gomes, Flora) 217, 218–24, 234 Moura, Roberto 52 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 136 Mt. Roskill, New Zealand 172, 180, 181–2, 185 muerte de un burócrata, La (Alea) 14 multivalence 1 music 80 see also popular music as a ‘becoming’ 98–9 classification and 13 globalization and 51, 85, 211 Orpheus and 46 patterns and 197 as phenomenon 98–9 place and 184–5 time and 83 war and 108 musical associations 198–9 musical choices 3 musical genres 13, 15, 92, 145, 232 mythic associations 198 myths 11, 41, 47, 197–8, 218, 224 Nájera, Manuel Gutiérrez 34, 37 national identity 12, 18, 20, 26, 28, 30, 36, 38, 40, 45, 64–5, 71, 73, 78, 81–3, 85, 92, 94, 96–7, 116–17, 119–20, 122, 130, 142, 171–4, 179, 182, 186, 218–19, 224, 234 Brazil and 45–6, 49, 63, 64 China and 71, 78, 82–3 continental melody, and 92 Korea 116, 119–20, 122 Mexico and 26, 27, 36, 40 New Zealand and 171–3, 175, 179, 181 nationalism 3, 8, 16, 20–1, 36, 38, 117–18, 123, 174 nature, rhythm of 83–4 nature/nurture debate 31 New Crowned Hope Festival 136 New Zealand see also No. 2 classical music and 179 cultural diversity and 180, 181t Fijians and 180–1 film and 171, 172, 173–5, 183, 184

film composing and 175 national identity and 171–3, 175, 179, 181, 185, 186 population of 180, 184 New Zealand Film Archive 173 New Zealand Film Commission 173–4, 182 Nha Fala (My Voice) (Gomes, Flora) 218, 231–3, 235 Niemeyer, Oscar 47 Nigeria see also Benin video-film film and 191–3, 194–5 language and 191–2 Nine Songs (Dun, Tan) 74 No One Knows About Persian Cats (Ghobadi, Bahman) 135, 136–8, 139–40, 142–3, 144, 145–6, 147, 148–9, 148f, 150 No. 2 (Fraser, Toa) 171–2, 186 awards and 176 ‘Bathe in the River’ 176, 178, 181 budget and 174, 182–4 ‘Core ‘ngrato’ 178, 184 ‘Home, Land and Sea’ 178 Fiji and 180–2, 186 local contexts and 184–5 multiculturalism and 180–2, 186 music styles in 176–9, 177t, 182, 183, 186 musical devices in 175–6 portrayal of New Zealand and 174–5 ‘Sai Levuka Ga’ 184 soundtrack musicians and 176, 181 Nobuyuki, Takeoka ‘Shina no yoru’ (China Nights) 92, 97, 98 Nollywood 191–3, 195, 197, 204, 211–12 non-musical sound 159, 165 Norrington, Stephen 163–4 Now (Álvarez) 14 ‘Now’ (Horne, Lena) 14 ‘Odo’ (song) 208–9 Omatsola, Daniel 198–9 O’Neill, Kevin: ‘League of Extraordinary Gentleman’ 164 Ong, Walter 9 ‘Orchestral Theatre Series’ (Dun, Tan) 74 ordinary, the 116

Index

247

L’Orfeo (Monteverdi, Claudio) 46 Orfeu (Diegues, Carlos) 48 Orfeu da Conceiçāo (Moraes, Vinícius de) 46–7 Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus) (Camus, Marcel) see Black Orpheus ‘Organic music and orchestra’ (Dun, Tan) 74 Orpheus myth 45, 46, 47–8, 57, 59, 62 Otro Francisco, El (Giral) 14 overlaps 208–9 Ozedu (Enogieru, Osaradion) 199–200, 202, 203, 207 Oziengbe, Ozin 199

New Zealand 172, 175, 177–8, 181–2, 185–6 Nigeria 197, 204 USA 6, 14–15 popularity 48, 99–100, 102, 104, 106, 117–18, 120, 123 Porter, Eric: Marco Polo and the Red Dragon 153 postcolonial cinemas 7 postcolonialism 2 see also colonialism Deleuze, Gilles and 7–8 nation invention and 7–8 primer delegado, El (Álvarez) 14 propaganda 7, 122

PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bassau and Cape Verde) 219 Panahi, Jafar 144–5 p’ansori 115–16, 118, 120, 122–3, 130–1 Paper Concerto for Paper Percussion and Orchestra (Dun, Tan) 74 paradigmatic analysis 199 Efe Baba and 202, 204, 206, 207, 209–10 Ozedu and 202, 203, 207 Ukhuedo and 202, 203–4, 205, 207, 210 Passion Pictures 155 Peralta, Angela 33, 40 Pereira dos Santos, Nelson: Manifesto for a Popular Cinema 64 Perez, Manuel 11 Perrone, Charles 47, 48, 58 piano, the 34 Piano, The (Campion, Jane) 171 Po di Sangui (Tree of Blood) (Gomes, Flora) 218, 227–31, 235 Po, Li 74 political ideology 6–7 see also ideology popular cinema 22, 64 popular music Brazil 46, 50–1, 64 Cuba 3–4, 16, 18–20, 22 Guinea 232 Japan 91, 93, 95–104, 106–7 Korea 117–18, 120, 122–3 Mexico 28, 38

qipaos 97 ‘Rabbits, The’ (Tan, Shaun) 155 race 46–7, 182, 193–5 see also minstrelsy shows Rancière, Jacques 86 rap music 178 ‘Red Tree, The’ (Tan, Shaun) 155, 157 religion Catholicism 36–7, 232 repetition 21, 92, 97, 102, 178, 202, 209–10, 222 re-territorialization 14 Revolution in Guinea (Cabral, Amílcar) 219 rhythm 12, 14, 28, 35, 47, 50–1, 77, 80–5, 95–6, 123, 149, 157, 160–3, 165, 185, 205, 217, 223, 225, 227, 234 Ri Kōran 91–2, 93, 95, 97 see also Yoshiko, Yamaguchi mimicry and 99 ‘Shina no yoru’ (China Nights) 97 ‘Rock Around the Clock’ (Bill Haley and the Comets) 6 roda de samba 52 Rodowick, David 139–40, 151, 233–4 Rodríguez, Ismael: Sobre las Olas (Over the Waves) 25–6, 29–36, 38–9, 40–1, 30f, 32f Rodríguez, Silvio 15 Romantic art 28–9, 37–8 Rosas, Juventino 25, 26, 27 ‘Carmen’ 27

248 Index biographies of 41 n.1 biopics and 25–6, 28–40 ‘Sobre las Olas’ 25, 27, 30, 35, 36, 39 Rubio, Carmen Romero 27 Ruhemann, Andrew 155, 156 ‘Sai Levuka Ga’ (song) 184 samba 45, 49, 50–1, 52–63, 65 samba/bossa nova 45, 50 see also bossa nova; samba Black Orpheus and 54–65 ‘Samba De Orfeu’ (Orpheus’s Samba) (Bonfá, Luís/Jobim, Tom) 45, 50, 55, 57, 58–9, 60–1, 62 samba lírico–amoroso 51–4, 55, 62, 65 sambistas 53–4, 65, 67 n.11 samulnori 122 Santa (Gamboa, Federico) 34 Santería 17 saudade 52, 53 Scarfies (Sarkies, Robert) 172 Scliar, Carlos 47 Seeger, Pete 20 Segovia, John 176–7, 184 ‘Separation Blues’ (Wakareno uta) (Hattori Ryōichi) 105–6 Shields, Rob 39 Shina no yoru (China Nights) (Fushimizu, Osamu) (film) 97, 98f, 100 ‘Shina no yoru’ (China Nights) (Takeoka Nobuyuki) (song) 92, 97, 98, 99 Shirdel, Kamran 144 Sinclair, Harry: ‘The Front Lawn’ project 183 Sisca, Alessandro see Cordiferro, Riccardo Smith, Hollie 176, 181 Sobre las Olas (Over the Waves) (Rodríguez, Ismael) (1950 film) 25–6, 29–36, 38–9, 40–1, 30f, 32f Sobre las Olas (Over the Waves) (Zacarías, Miguel) (1932 film) 25, 28, 31–8, 39–41, 31f, 35f ‘Sobre las Olas’ (Rosas, Juventino) (waltz) 25, 26, 27, 30, 35, 36, 39, 40 Solás, Humberto Barrio Cuba 19 Cecilia 14 Miel para Ochún 19

son (music) 12, 18, 21 Sonnenfeld, Barry: Wild Wild West 164 Sŏp’yŏnje (Im Kwŏnt’aek) 115–17, 118–19, 121, 123–30 dislocation and 119, 123 family in 123–4, 129 feminine Other and 127, 130 han (grief, sadness and suffering) and 120, 126–31 inner domain of culture and 129–30 landscape in 125 locality and 116 masculinist desire and 127–8, 130 mood music and 129 p’ansori and 115–16, 118, 120, 122–3, 130–1 songs in 123, 128, 130 Stam, Robert 48 Stanton, Andrew: WALL-E 155 Steampunk 163–4, 165, 168 Stringer, Julian 116, 120, 129 Such’ŏl, Kim 117, 123 suture, concept of 107–8 Symphony in two movements (Dun, Tan) 73 syntagmatic analysis 199 Efe Baba and 200, 201f Ozedu and 199–200 Ukhuedo and 200–1 Tablada, José Juan 34, 37 tairiku melody 91 see also continental melody, the Tan Dun 71–2 Career of 72–6 Chinese philosophy and 74 cinema and 75–85 colour and 74 Death and Fire: Dialogue with Paul Klee 74 Earth Concerto for stone and ceramic percussion and orchestra 74 Eight Memories in Watercolour 74 Hero and 72, 76–85 hybridity and 73–4, 85–6 Li Sao (‘Encountering Sorrow’) 72, 73 Man ban 73 Map, The 74–5 Martial Arts Trilogy 76, 80

Index multi-media and 84–5 Nine Songs 74 ‘Orchestral Theatre Series’ 74 ‘Organic music and orchestra’ 74 Paper Concerto for Paper Percussion and Orchestra 74 Symphony in two movements 73 as translator 86 water and 81, 81f Water Heavens 75 Tan, Shaun 153–5 ‘Arrival, The’ 155 Harvey Crumpet 153 ‘Lost Thing, The’ (book) 155, 156 Lost Thing, The (film) see Lost Thing, The ‘Rabbits, The’ 155 ‘Red Tree, The’ 155, 157 ‘Tales from Outer Surburbia’ 155 ‘Tales from Outer Surburbia’ (Tan, Shaun) 155 ‘The Front Lawn’ project 183 time 83 Time for Drunken Horses, A (Ghobadi, Bahman) 134 Tinhorão, José Ramos 50–1 Tognetti, Richard 157 Tokyo Kōshinkyoku (Mizoguchi, Kenji) 102 Tonoshita, Tatsuya 93, 96, 103 Torres, Daniel 11 total art 74, 86 total mobilization 93, 101, 103, 104, 105–7 traditional music 3, 12, 73, 116–18, 120, 122, 186 Trinity Roots: ‘Home, Land and Sea’ 177, 178 Tropicália movement 51, 64 troubadour poetry 54 Tsaaior, James 195 Udji Azui de Yonta (The Blue Eyes of Yonta) (Gomes, Flora) 217–18, 225–7, 234 Ukhuedo (Igbinomwanhia, Osaretin) 200–1, 202, 203–4, 205, 207, 210, 211 última cena, La (Alea) 14 Vasconcelos, José 28, 35

249

Verdade Tropical (Tropical Truth) (Veloso, Caetano) 48 Veloso, Caetano 51, 65 Verdade Tropical (Tropical Truth) 48 ‘Viewer’s Dialectic, The’ (Alea, Tomás Gutiérrez) 6–7 Villazana, José María 34 visual associations 198 Wagie Emwenma Gha Yema 197 Waldo, Frank 47 WALL-E (Stanton, Andrew) 155 ‘Wasurecha iya yo’ (‘Don’t forget me’) (Watanabe Hamako) 99, 101 water 27, 33, 36, 74–5, 77, 81–2, 81f, 84, 104, 159, 165, 231 Water Heavens (Dun, Tan) 75 Watts, Sarah: Look Both Ways 156 Wellington, New Zealand 173, 182 Wenders, Wim: Buena Vista Social Club 21 Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (Zemeckis, Robert) 155 Wild Wild West (Sonnenfeld, Barry) 164 Wind Will Carry Us, The (Kiarostami, Abbas) 134 women 11, 27, 37–8, 46, 57, 92, 105, 107, 129, 133, 137, 141, 148–50, 203, 210, 219, 222–4, 229, 232 films of Bahman Ghobadi and 142, 146–7, 148 samba/bossa nova and 53–4 Sŏp’yŏnje (Im Kwŏnt’aek) and 127, 130 Y el suelo fue tomado por asalto (Álvarez) 14 Yezerski, Michael 156–7, 158, 165 Yimou, Zhang: Hero see Hero yin yang 74, 76, 82, 83–4 Yoshiko, Yamaguchi 91–2 see also Ri Kōran ‘If I Go Away to the Sea’ (‘umi yukaba’) 104 Zacarías, Miguel: Sobre las Olas (Over the Waves) 25, 28, 31–8, 39–41, 31f, 35f Zarate, Janus 164 Zhuangzi 83